Samantha Smart (2 page)

The Professor was manic; Samantha could see his mind’s eye shuffling possibilities faster than a Chinese game of ping-pong. It looked like he was going to lose it. Quickly, she decided that someone had to take firm control of the situation, and since Professor Smythe was obviously teetering on the brink of blowing a brain fuse and Polly was quite happily distracted by an unexpected snack, it was she who had to step up to the task.

“Professor,”she said firmly, grabbing his flailing arms and making him look right at her, “You’ve got to calm down.”

For a moment the old fellow looked shocked, then shook his head violently as if to clear out a nest of bees or to settle some loose screws back into their proper places.

“You’re right, Samantha, of course. This won’t do us any good. And after all, I think I can fix it. I think I will, or I do fix it at some point, but I’m not sure, because I’m fairly sure I haven’t fixed it already. Yet, that is. Oh, my. I hope
I can fix it.”

“What exactly is it that you’ve done, Professor? I’d be glad to help if I can, but I’m afraid I’m going to need a bit more information.”

“Yes, yes,” The Professor looked as if he was becoming fidgety again, then sat down and looked straight at Samantha. “All right. I’ll give you the whole story, then. I suppose you must know if you’re to help, and you are
already helping, though you don’t know it yet... well, anyway, Samantha–I fear that this information is dangerous and I must require that you tell
no one
what I’m about to tell you. Do you understand? Not your mother, not your friends–
no one.
At least not until I know more about what has happened.”

“Well... of course, Professor,” Samantha replied, summoning up as much responsibility as an almost-twelve-year-old could, “you can trust me. And–I want to help.”

“All right then. Hmmm... ” he gazed hard at her for a second then added under his breath. “I suppose I may not even have to worry about you telling anyone... ”

At this he got up, took Samantha’s hand and led her out of his office; Polly looked up expectantly as they departed but Professor Smythe closed the door, shutting her in. They walked down many back hallways of the museum’s sub-basement, The Professor moving very nervously, always looking around as if he were afraid someone was watching them. They picked their way through corridors cluttered with hand-carved totem poles, boxes of unassembled dinosaur bones and some sort of giant ant farm exhibits that had been abandoned down here in favor of newer, more interactive displays. At last they came to a door which had two colossal stuffed polar bears on either side of it, as if they were guarding something in the room behind it. Professor Smythe looked around, then punched in a number on the door’s telephone-button-like combination lock and opened it into the darkness beyond.

“In here, Samantha,” he whispered, motioning for her to come in.

Once inside, The Professor closed the door and turned on a light switch, illuminating an utterly amazing sight. Inside the very large room was a scene straight out of Pre-Columbian Central America–an entire diorama of ornately carved stone set up in a half-circle, each component block at least ten feet tall. It reminded Samantha of pictures she’d seen of Stonehenge, which she knew was in England, but instead of simple, rough blocks, these were covered in carved pictographs and lots of things that kind of looked like letters. Within the outer ring, in the center of the floor was a huge stone platform with what looked like some sort of gate or doorway set atop it. There were two inwardly-curved, sharp-edged stone pillars coming up from the platform’s base that almost met at the top, some nine feet higher. Two steps were cut into the base which led up to the ‘gate,’ and most notably, in contrast to the surrounding stonework there was a marvelous keystone which sat perfectly in-between the top edges of the two curved pillars, which bore only one symbol. This piece was made of a brilliant, shiny black material that looked almost like glass.

“Obsidian,” The Professor noted, sensing what she had wanted to ask. “It’s incredibly rare to find a piece so large and so flawless. Just that one piece would be priceless, as a gem. But it is far more than a mere thing of beauty.”

Samantha swallowed hard. She had seen many things like this before in the museum, but there was an undeniable uniqueness to this thing, something almost... eerie.

“Where did this come from?” she asked.

“The Yucatan Peninsula,” replied The Professor.

“Is it–Mayan?” Samantha remembered that a tribe of Indians called the Mayas had built an impressive civilization on the Yucatan Peninsula, which she knew from her geography lessons to be in southern Mexico.

“One of the strangest things,” The Professor mused, “Its markings and pictographs are quite like very early Mayan finds, but I can’t translate it very well from the museum’s Mayan database. It’s sort of an archaic variety, which
explains the fact that I’ve dated the material to almost 5,000 B.C.
Samantha, that is long
before the earliest relics of any Mayan–or practically any other civilization. This thing is older than Egypt’s pyramids! Many scientists would claim there were no people in the region at all at that time. It is a thing out of time.”

Samantha stared at the monstrous thing, taking in Professor Smythe’s words. She walked closer to the ‘gate’ platform–it did look very
old. But that–that obsidian
keystone looked like it was made yesterday.

“We discovered it in a remote, mountainous region, buried under nearly two hundred feet of earth and rock. It’s a miracle anyone
ever found it at all.”

“Well... what’s it got to do with time, Professor?”

The Professor sighed heavily and began to look nervous again. He wrung his hands and his lower lip began to tremble slightly as he spoke.

“This–this gate,
this ring, these symbols,” he said, gesturing, “They’re–they’re sort of a time machine,
Samantha. I don’t know how–I’m still trying to decipher many of the symbols–”

“A
time machine?
” Samantha interrupted, rolling her eyes. “Yeah, right. You’ve been reading too many science fiction stories, Professor. I hope you’ll forgive my saying so, but maybe you need a... a vacation or something... ”

“I know it sounds incredible, Samantha, but listen to me–I can prove it to you. Yesterday, I got it to... work. I’m sure I can do it again, but I need more time to study it–I want to be more accurate the next time I try, and more... careful. Samantha,” The Professor grabbed her arm gently and led her urgently back to his office, locking the room behind them. Once inside, he pulled out the bottom drawer of his desk and produced a newspaper. A satisfied Polly jumped up on Samantha’s lap, happy she had returned.

“Samantha, I bought this newspaper yesterday, in midtown. Look at it.”

Samantha looked, and Polly sniffed. The paper was new, and she could almost smell fresh ink on it, suggesting it had indeed been printed very recently. The trouble was, the cover story was about the construction of the Empire State Building, as if it were the latest news. Her eyes wandered to the top of the page, where she read the date:
August 14, 1931.
It looked very authentic.

“It must be a reprint,” she said at last.

“No,” The Professor replied in a hushed but excited tone. “No, Samantha. I walked around yesterday in the New York City of seventy years ago. It is vividly etched in my memory. The cars, the people’s clothing–it was absolutely amazing. An incredible experience.”

“I can’t believe it,” Samantha repeated her skepticism.

“Neither could I,” said The Professor. “Even though I lived it. So–I ran some tests, on the newspaper. Trying to date it.”

“And?”

“Well, it was strange, Samantha. The ink, though it looks and smells absolutely fresh, is composed of chemicals which were banned from use in printing in favor of more environmentally friendly recipes–in 1957. The paper–and this test allowed me to use very
exciting new technology–we can say with near certainty that the DNA in the wood pulp used to make this paper came from an alder tree, an alder tree that grew within twenty square miles of a specific site in western Pennsylvania. Samantha, look at this–” The Professor pulled something else from his desk drawer, a picture.

“This is a satellite photo of those twenty square miles.”

The picture showed a large body of water.

“I don’t get it, Professor... a lake?” Polly, too, seemed puzzled, but probably more because she was wondering if the picture was edible.

“A lake. Exactly. Man-made. This valley was flooded in 1962. And that’s not all. I did some additional research–before it was purchased by the county, the land was owned by the Western Pennsylvania Lumber Company. Their records show that wood collected from this region was sold to paper mills in West Virginia from 1929 until 1936. It’s proof positive, Samantha.”

It seemed to be. Samantha stared at the picture, then at the paper.
Could The Professor
really have found a working time machine?
She pondered all this, entertaining fantasies of winning lotteries and preventing disasters, then recalled the really unnerving part of all that Professor Smythe had said since she had encountered him some twenty minutes earlier.

“Professor, you said that you had... done something wrong. Made a... a mess... ”

“Yes, Samantha,” he sighed. “I don’t know how to explain this, but... since I took the trip, well–some things have... changed.”

“Changed?”

“Yes,” The Professor continued. “I–I’m not even sure to what extent, but–Samantha, I fear I’ve done something terribly wrong.”

Samantha herself began to fidget now. She felt suddenly uncomfortable, like she was in a strange place that she had never been before. What had The Professor done? Could it even be
set right? Would their world be changed forever? And how much
had been changed? These were questions that urgently needed to be answered, though she feared in her heart that even the wise, knowledgeable Professor Smythe had no idea how to begin to answer them.

Samantha sat and tried to absorb all the information The Professor was telling her. She had asked for it, she supposed, but it was all very confusing.

“It seems,” The Professor continued carefully, “That this building is a bit of a nexus. Or, at least, part of this building... you see, Samantha, you walked in here from the world’s natural
time sequence–the time sequence that the world is supposed
to be progressing in. I fear, however, that if you walk out again, you will experience what I have: A quite... different world, a divergent time sequence, in other words, the evolution of whatever small thing I somehow changed when I went back in time.”

“You mean I might not live in the same house anymore?” Samantha asked with a hint of panic.

“Samantha.” Professor Smythe sighed. “I mean that what you think is your house is probably not even there
now. Or it might be there, but probably underwater.” He scratched his head.

“
Underwater!!?”
Samantha practically screamed. “What do you mean!? I have to be home by five! Oh, man, Professor, I think I should go. You’re really freaking me out.”

“Samantha! Wait–” The Professor tried to stop her, but she was off, running through the museum’s hallways, Polly stuffed hastily into her backpack. She felt sort of scared now, and had decided that being at home would make her feel better, even if it was with Todd and his stupid friends. Underwater, indeed! It couldn’t possibly have rained that
much in the past hour.

She ran up two flights of stairs and through a door into the museum’s lobby, noting the lack of people that had been there earlier. She glanced quickly at the ticket counter, but the people at it were strange–Luann wasn’t there. Had she gone home? Was her shift over already? Samantha had never seen these ticket sellers at all, and she felt even more nervous. Running through the front doors out onto the steps, she froze.

It was
terribly wrong. There was no Central Park West. There was no
Central Park.
It was all water.
All water.
Samantha stared in disbelief. Where the park had been there was now a huge, open space like a great rectangular lake, with clusters of what looked like houseboats floating here and there. She could see an island where Belvedere Castle stood, surrounded by boats, but no other land was in sight. Strangely, there were no trees or even treetops visible. Samantha wondered if trees simply drowned in the event of such a terrible flood as had presumably happened here.

The museum looked pretty much the same on the outside, though its entire ground floor and then some must now be underwater. The surrounding city was in a similar situation, and the blocks that stretched to the north and south reminded Samantha of postcards she’d seen of Venice, Italy, where most of the streets were more like canals and people got around in long boats called gondolas. Indeed, it seemed like New York had definitely gone the same way, as she could see many boats buzzing around in the distance; some were slow, drifting rowboats, some canoes and kayaks, many motorized boats with cabs on top–in fact, they looked very much like taxi-cabs–or at least what she imagined taxi-cabs would look like if New York City were a world of water.