He tugged her into a sitting position. “Where the heck did you come from? I looked over and the lawn was empty, then poof! there you were. Out of thin air.”
She rubbed the back of her head, as if she’d struck it when she fell. “Exercising,” she said lamely. “You were … busy. I came around the corner. I tripped and fell. You looked up when it happened … saw me.”
“I know what I saw. Empty lawn. Girl on lawn. No trip.”
She shrugged, tried to look clueless.
“What’s this?” He picked up the handheld device she’d used to transport herself, the forbidden device she’d taken. She wasn’t an authorized time traveler. She’d gone into the university’s science lab seeking one of her professors, and the device had been sitting on an empty desk. Careless of someone. Time-travel devices were supposed to be kept under lock and key. Hers was a crime of chance. She had picked up the instrument, played with it, figured out its workings; then she had pushed a red button and it had discharged. And she’d landed—where? She had no idea. She only knew that she was in the past. Would the time police believe her when they came for her?
She eased the device from the boy’s hand. “Keeps track of my medical stats.” She made up the explanation on the spot.
“Are you sick?”
She needed to get away; needed time to think. “Medical testing.”
“You don’t look sick. Who are you?” She pressed her lips together, edged away. If the police materialized, if they discovered where she’d landed, if they knew she’d made contact, they would bind the boy, maybe even wipe his mind. “Maura. That’s my name.”
“Dylan Sorenson,” he said.
“I need to go.” She stood.
He steadied her. “Where’re you going? Did you bump your head?”
“I’m fine.” She inched backward.
“Hey, don’t run off.” He made a grab for her arm. “Someone should check you out. My mom’s just across the street. Come let her take a look at you.”
“Not now. I’m late.” A choke hold of panic tightened her throat. She evaded his grasp, turned and took off. “Catch you later.” Maura knew she could outrun him. She was in her prime, and no one born in the past was as physically advanced as people from her era.
Once she rounded the corner, she looked over her shoulder to see if he was following. He wasn’t. She slowed, caught her breath. The sun shone brilliantly. Green grass spread in front of every house as far down the sidewalk as she could see. Water, thrown by a spinning wand, sparkled on blades of several grassy patches.
She thought the time period beautiful, and as long as she was here, she figured she’d check it out until the time cops picked her up. If she didn’t disturb anything, what could it hurt?
Even if she returned instantly, she’d be in serious trouble. But she didn’t want to go back. Not yet. She was eager to explore this society. Until she was ready to leave, where could she hide?
She walked, attempting to get an idea of where and when she’d landed. In Maura’s world, scientists knew that time was a stream, fluid and ever moving. Time travel plopped a person into the stream at random if the traveler hadn’t specified time and place. And Maura hadn’t planned this trip.
The neighborhood lawns gave way to streets with buildings. Traffic began to pass her, cars that rode on noisy tires instead of a quiet whoosh of compressed air. No parking on the fringes of a town or city and coming into the main commercial area on foot or on transport vehicles. People passed her too, seeming not to notice her, although she was dressed in a body-hugging jumpsuit, a single piece, the high-tech material cool in warm weather, warm in cold weather. By the looks of the trees and flower beds, she figured it was late spring or early summer. She’d heard that the past had been ugly and toxic, but this place didn’t seem too bad in spite of the exhaust fumes that made her feel nauseated.
Maura stopped suddenly in front of a building. A sign read CLARKSVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY, EAST BRANCH. A library. She’d read about such places. They had been storehouses of knowledge at one time. Not like in her day, when anyone could plug into the Intercontinental Information Airstream, or IIA, anytime, anyplace. Maura was relieved by her good fortune. Here was a building that housed present and past, a place where she could learn what was necessary to help her blend in. She bounded up the steps, eager to get started.
By the time night came, Maura was again outside, looking for food and a place to sleep. She wandered back down the streets where she’d first emerged from the time stream. The little houses looked homey and the lawns well kept in this Tennessee city one hundred seventeen years in the past. She wasn’t nearly as afraid of discovery by time cops as she had been before her afternoon in the library. The current culture ran on electrically generated energy, so the electromagnetic fields shielded her with static, which acted as a safety net. In Maura’s world energy was gathered and sustained much differently, so it would take the police a while to locate her—but they would. Only a few scientists with top clearance were allowed to time-travel, and then only as observers. No one was allowed to wander in the time stream illegally … too dangerous. The cops always caught illegal time swimmers and prosecuted them.
She pushed the recorder button on her watch, and as she walked, she made a private recording to cope with her sense of isolation. Plus, it gave her an opportunity to practice speaking in the odd cadence of the area. “All right … I’ve gotten myself into a situation,” she confessed to her recorder. She went on to detail her day and her surroundings. “Maybe I shouldn’t have fiddled with the device, but it was just lying there. Who wouldn’t have messed with it?”
Guilt struck. She was a thief, which went against her moral grain. But she was also a first-year university student, on track to become a Mind Doctor, and a member of the two percent of her population born with the DNA of a Sensitive. The competition was fierce for the coveted degree and life’s work as a Mind Healer. Travel into the past would give her a leg up on her first research paper. And if she did no harm while in the past, maybe the authorities would be lenient with her.
Maura walked to the house where she’d first materialized and hunkered in the bushes, grateful for the clothing that kept her comfortable. Her stomach growled. “Forget it!” she told her hunger. “Nothing I can do about food right now.” She tucked the time-travel device into a pouch in her bodysuit, crossed her arms and waited for sleep and for the long night to end, facing the only house where she might go and the only person who knew she was here.
2
Maura watched two cars leave Dylan’s driveway, one with a man driving, the other with a woman driving and two young girls in the back. Her heart leapt, hoping that the boy, Dylan, was still in the house. She rang the doorbell, heard someone banging around inside, felt her heart hammering. The door was flung open.
“What did you forget, Luc—” Dylan stopped mid-sentence, stared out at her. “You!”
Maura smiled weakly. “It’s me.”
“The girl who ran away from me.”
“I—I was scared.” She had formed her story during the night between bouts of sleep, part truth, part fabrication. Every lie cost her a jolt of pain in her head. Sensitives had finely honed consciences, and lies sent discomfiting waves through their brains. Now she was starving and had to lie as she stood in the past confronting humans of lesser intelligence.
“Maura, right?” He leaned against the doorjamb. “You weren’t jogging yesterday, were you?”
“Hiding in the bushes.” The lie made her wince.
“Why?”
“I didn’t want them, the police, to find me.” Truth.
“The police? Why are the police after you?”
“I ran away.” A half-truth. Small jolt.
“From what?”
“A bad situation.”
A flicker of empathy showed on his face. As a Sensitive, Maura was able to read others’ moods and the auras surrounding their bodies. Dylan’s aura was cloudy, meaning he was troubled. ??
?What do you want me to do about it?”
Maura tried to appear pitiful, which was in fact the case—she was in a mess and needed help. “Can I bum some food? I’m really hungry.”
His expression softened and he stepped aside. “I can feed you. Kitchen’s this way.” She followed. He said, “I thought you were my sister, Lucy. She always forgets something and has to come back for it. Mom’s taken her and my other sister, Casey—they’re twins—to ballet class. Not that they can dance. But they think they can.”
Maura appreciated his easy chatter, an attempt to make her feel comfortable. Something she’d said in her partly fabricated story had connected with him.
In the kitchen he directed her to a barstool at a high counter, where she sat, trying not to let her eyes dart everywhere at once. The kitchen was an archive from over a hundred years before her time. She had no idea what some of the equipment was for.
He pulled open the door of a large box that lit up, and rummaged inside. “What would you like?”
Maura was stumped. Her survey in the library had been extensive, but she hadn’t zeroed in on food. “Some fruit …”
“Come on, you need some real food. How about I fix you some toaster waffles and ham?”
She had no idea what he was offering. “Sounds good.” She watched, fascinated while he poked discs into slots in a machine and put a slab of something pinkish into another machine called a microwave. Minutes later, he was pouring liquid goo atop the stack of discs and shoving the plate toward her. The scent was awesome. She tasted the waffles, liked them immediately, but wasn’t fond of the ham. She realized ham was meat, and her family didn’t eat meat—too expensive.
As she ate he leaned toward her on his elbows from the opposite side of the counter. “Now why don’t you tell me what’s going on with you.”
She stared down at the plate, echoed a story she’d read about a homeless boy in the library. She was also homeless, so she knew her words were believable. “I ran away a while ago. Just been living however I can. I need to hold up, get a job, make some money so I can keep on moving.”
“Money’s critical to travel,” he said.
In her society there was no money, only credits and debits, but she understood the concept of payment for work performed.
“Why’d you run?”
“Bad home scene.” Big jolt. She had the best family in the world. “I-I’d rather not go into details. If that’s all right.”
“No pressure. Where’s your stuff?”
Stuff. What did he mean?
“Your things,” he said. “Clothes, bedroll, whatever.”
She chewed on her lower lip. “I don’t have any stuff.”
“You left with nothing?”
“Short notice.”
Dylan grinned, shook his head in disbelief. “Didn’t you have a plan?”
“No plan.”
His expression sobered. “Must have been a really bad situation.”
She watched his aura darken. The words bad situation had hit some mark inside him, turned him pensive. Nonchalantly she asked, “You ever been in a bad situation?”
She felt him shutting down, pushing her away emotionally. “You could say that.”
Maura backed off. The nerve she’d hit with her question had alienated him. “Well, then you understand what’s going on with me. I have to hunker down somewhere. Just until I can pay my way out of here.”
“I can’t put you in our garage like some homeless cat.”
“Oh, I’m not asking—”
“It’s okay. I get it. Your back’s to a wall. You need help.”
She nodded, watched him as he considered her problem, turning it into his own. Amazing! This perfect stranger was willing to help her. She’d been taught that people from the past were self-centered and totally devoid of values. He wasn’t a Sensitive. He was a male human from the past with noble impulses. Unexpected.
“My dad’s a vet,” he said.
She sorted through a jumble of new words in her brain. “An ex-soldier?”
Dylan looked quizzical. “No. An animal doctor. Dad runs a clinic. He usually hires extra help in the summer. Maybe I can put in a word for you.”
“That would be good.” In her future only the wealthiest people kept pets. “And really nice of you.”
“Yeah, I’m such a nice guy.”
The nuance of bitterness in his voice took her aback. He was really telling her he wasn’t a nice guy. She let it pass. “Now, about your garage …”
He smiled. “Won’t work. But I might have something else for you. I’m cutting grass, doing odd jobs for neighbors this summer. I’m house-sitting for the Carters two blocks over.”
“You’re sitting in their house all summer?”
He shook his head, looked puzzled. “I’m watching their house while they’re gone. Get it? I water their plants, feed their two cats, and keep an eye on the place. If I set you up to live there, you can dump litter boxes every day and feed the beasts. I’ll give you twenty-five percent of the money they’re paying me.”
She’d have to return to the library, get on those slow ancient computers and figure out what he was asking of her. “I’ll do it,” she said, clueless as to what she was signing on for. Still, how difficult could it be?
“But you can’t be seen by the neighbors,” Dylan said. “No lights at night. No coming and going out the front door.”
“I’ll be careful.” She was amazed by the lengths he was going to just to help her out. What a research paper she could write. Her classmates were limited to viewing the past through a time prism, watching without hearing conversations, making assumptions based on intuition. Images, but no involvement. Maura had gone into the past. She was living it, expanding her knowledge base, which would serve her profession in countless ways. If she got home and wasn’t prosecuted. Cheater, her conscience shouted.
“I’ll walk you over.” Dylan plucked a set of keys off a hook by the door.
“You’d do this for me?”
“Sure. My payback good deed to the universe,” he added.
Again she heard a bitter edge in his voice.
Suddenly the kitchen door flew open and two little girls hurtled into the room. They stopped cold when they saw Maura at the counter. Behind them came a short woman juggling purse, clothing and dance shoes. “Dylan I thought you were going to cut—” She too stopped when she saw Maura.
Maura slid off the stool, her heart pounding and her body poised to run.
3
“Hello,” Dylan’s mother said. “Have we met?”
“I’m Maura.”
“Sandra Sorenson.”
“She’s staying a few blocks over.” Dylan said. “With her grandparents for the summer.”
His mother smiled, accepting the explanation without hesitation. “Where are you from?”
Maura flipped through maps she’d studied in the library. “Kansas,” she said, hoping it was a good answer.
“Like Dorothy,” one of the girls said.
Maura didn’t know any Dorothy, but she nodded agreeably.
“Butt out, Lucy,” Dylan said. “We’re not in Oz.” He waited a beat, added, “Maura needs a job. Dad hired on for the summer yet?”
“I don’t think so,” Sandra said. “How old are you, Maura?”
Maura didn’t want to admit to being only fifteen. She’d read that people from this time weren’t really considered adults until they were eighteen. “Seventeen,” she said. “Almost eighteen.”
Lucy piped up with, “Me and Casey are eight. Dylan’s eighteen. He’s older than you.”
This surprised Maura. In her society, eighteen-year-olds were either finishing university studies or living in co-ops, working and earning credits toward their futures and the futures of their aged loved ones. Only rarely did an able-bodied person as old as eighteen remain at home. In her day, hard work and planning were required of everyone.
“Girls, go up and change,” Sandra said. Both of th
em bounced out of the kitchen. Sandra turned to Maura. “Are you good with animals? Can you deal with yappy dogs that might bite? Cats that scratch?”
Of course Maura didn’t know, but she said she could.
“I’ll speak to Jerry tonight. Maybe you can go into his office and meet him and see the place tomorrow.”
“Absolutely. Thank you.”
Dylan said, “Okay, all set. Come on. I’ll show you that place we were talking about.”
Maura followed him outside. “You have a nice family.”
He shrugged. “I guess.”
She knew he was glossing over sentimentality. He liked his family, but something was not right. She sensed it. There was a darkness that separated him from them. She itched to know more, but she would have to get the information properly. As a Sensitive, she could read thoughts and scan memory cells. As a doctor-in-training, she wasn’t allowed such privileges unless a patient was under her care and she had his or her permission. If she was going to be a doctor of the mind and spirit, she mustn’t invade and take information. Unguarded thoughts and memories and discards of the mind were fair game, though, akin to overhearing a conversation between strangers.
Maura fell into step beside him. “Where’s your father’s office?”
“Too far to walk. I’ll pick you up around eleven tomorrow and take you. And take you to lunch after. You’ll be hungry again by then.”
She thought about it. “I guess you’re right.”
He laughed. “I’ll bring over a hamburger and fries tonight, plus some other food.”
She thought about the ham he’d fed her this morning. “Vegetables are fine. And fruit.”
“You’re a vegetarian?”
“Is that bad?”
“No … it’s just that—I know someone else who is. Once knew someone.” He corrected himself.
His aura darkened; his eyes saddened. “Whatever you bring me, I’ll eat,” Maura said cheerfully. “Doesn’t matter.”
Two blocks later, he turned onto a walkway leading to a trim brick house. “Your new home,” he said, unlocking the front door. He punched a keypad on a small wall panel. “I’ll write down the security code for you.” Of course, Maura already knew the code from Dylan’s unguarded thoughts. “Use it when you come and go. Punch in the code, go out the back door. You’ll have about a minute before the house gets locked down.”