Samantha Smart (29 page)

“Do you know what’s going on here, Samantha? Why is this Agent Stiles suddenly all over our lives? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“I don’t know why she’s doing this all of a sudden,” Samantha tried hard not to lie outright. “She thinks I know who blow-gunned you and that I’m not telling her.”

“Well, do you?” Cindy asked, peeved.

“Mom, I
told
you,” Samantha did her best tweener whine. “I didn’t see exactly where the dart came from.” This was essentially true, though she had dodged the more direct question. They reached the Ninth Street station and descended the stairs.

“Well, what happened with the guy that they caught?”

“It wasn’t him, Mom. He was just some teenager with a little bit of a record. I
know
it wasn’t him, and I didn’t want him to get in trouble for something that he didn’t do.”

“Did you even go and look at him? You were home so fast yesterday–how could you know?”

“Agent Stiles described him to me. Just a poor Hispanic kid. It wasn’t him, Mom–I remember the guy she described–he was at the show, but he was way too close to us to have used a blowgun. If you think hard enough, you’ll remember him yourself.”

“Well... all right,” Cindy grumbled as they boarded an inbound F train. “I’ll believe you. My own memory is pretty, well, fuzzy, as you might expect. But I would hope that you would want whomever is responsible for this to answer for it! This was no prank, Samantha; I was in a coma
for five days! And let me tell you, I can always think of things I’d rather be doing than eating my dinner through a tube!” She grabbed a pole as the train started moving, taking Samantha’s hand with her free arm. It was crowded–more last minute Christmas shoppers, no doubt.

“Of course I want them to answer for it, Mom. And they will, if I can do anything about it. It just wasn’t that kid, I swear!”

They rode along in silence until they reached the Fourteenth Street station, where they had to switch to the C train to get uptown. They walked up the stairs through hundreds of rush-hour commuters and more frenzied shoppers and Samantha scoped out the women’s room on the way. She asked her mom to wait so she could stop and check it out, feigning an urgent need. Cindy decided she might as well come in, too, so Samantha had to fake that she was using one of the toilet stalls. There didn’t seem to be anything particularly special about the place, but this was to be Alpha Team’s rendevous tomorrow afternoon. She marked the bathroom’s location in her memory, flushed the toilet and came out to wash her hands.

“Come on, Samantha, we don’t want to miss our connection,” Cindy tried to get her moving.

They hurried to the uptown platform and just squeezed onto a C train before the doors closed and it left the station. It didn’t really matter that much - there were lots of different lines that ran this route and they had taken a B, a 3 or a 4 at times when they’d had to. The C was probably the fastest, though, and they got off at Seventy-second Street no more than ten minutes later.

“I wish they’d fix that other damn stop,” Cindy complained as they emerged from underground into the frigid air. Samantha silently agreed. She actually enjoyed the walk in the warmer months, but all
travel was a pain in the winter, especially
walking. It did perk the both of them up, however, and Samantha felt more awake and aware as they climbed the museum’s steps. This was a good thing. From what Samantha could tell, they would want their wits about them to contend with Stiles.

The museum seemed normal at first glance. People were milling about as usual and the gift shop was especially busy due to the holidays. Cindy greeted Luann as they walked into the office behind the ticket counters, who immediately went into an excited account of the Federal agents’ arrival that morning. Apparently, they were still there somewhere downstairs, likely tearing apart Professor Smythe’s labs and office. Cindy grabbed Samantha’s hand and headed for the stairway, assuring her somewhat dim-witted co-worker that she would be back shortly to commence her ticketing duties.

After walking down the stairs and traversing some length of hallways, they arrived at The Professor’s office. Samantha gasped. It was in a shambles: Books and papers were strewn everywhere, CDs and floppy disks lined the floors and The Professor’s main desktop computer was packed up in a pile of cords and wires. They could hear Smythe’s voice coming from his back room, his closet-library, emphatically trying to protect his books, notes and databases.

“Lingering looters!” The familiar English accent almost shrieked. “This is my work! And–and my library! These books are priceless! If you harm a page of any of them, I’ll have the mayor on you!”

“Relax,” Stiles’ silky voice replied. “We’ll return everything exactly as we found it.”

“When!?” The Professor blurted out in exasperation.

“When we’re finished,” Stiles said calmly.

“Wonderful,” Smythe quieted down. “When you’re finished. Well, I suppose I’ll just have to start some new research in the meantime,” he went on, almost just babbling to himself at this point. “Perhaps something useful this time, like how to breed the curiosity out of Federal agents or how to dissolve Federal agents in a red wine vinegar solution... ”

Agent Stiles frowned at him, but her face quickly changed into a slight smile when she saw Cindy and Samantha coming toward her, picking their way through the debris.

“Ah, our other favorite suspect,” she said, looking at Samantha.

“Cindy! Samantha!” Smythe ran up to them. “What’s going on? Why is this woman destroying my office, my–my labs!?”

“I don’t know, Ainsley,” Cindy replied.

“They’re tearing our house apart, too!” Samantha tried to play her best little girl.

“What are you people looking for!?” Smythe barked at Agent Stiles, who was just then whispering with a fellow agent.

“Actually,” Stiles smiled a tight, thin-lipped smile, “we may have just found it. Professor, Samantha, would you follow us please? Ms. Smart,” she turned to Cindy, “you’re welcome to come as well, or you can return to your ticketing station, whichever you prefer.” The way she said “ticketing station” made Cindy’s blood boil. It was a snobbish, looking-down-the-nose tone the agent had used. Cindy decided to follow.

They walked out of The Professor’s office and past his two main laboratory rooms, both of which contained agents hauling away some of the smaller machines and photographing those that were too big to easily move. Gallons and gallons of chemicals had also been impounded, and one agent was busy stuffing plant samples into large, plastic zip-lock baggies.

“I don’t know what it is you think you’re going to find,” The Professor sighed deeply. “I’ve already given you all the information about the plant, my antidote formula and my process for getting it, Agent Stiles. What have I not made completely transparent to you?”

“Our scientists have studied your antidote–and your story, Professor,” Stiles walked on, her words punctuated by the clack of her heels on the basement’s tile floors. They were now heading straight for the time machine room. They reached the door and Stiles looked up at Smythe. “They’ve concluded that your explanation is implausible, and that they were unable to reproduce your experiments in their lab. Live DNA could not be extracted from the fossil samples you provided. This leads them to believe that your antidote could only have been synthesized from a recently harvested plant, that plant being
Phylathimus Phylathum,
which accepted knowledge holds has been extinct for at least nine hundred years.” They reached the door with the keypad lock on it. “Combination, please.”

The Professor looked up at Agent Stiles, then at Cindy and Samantha. Samantha tried not to gulp obviously but began to break out in a nervous sweat. Stiles smiled as The Professor started punching in the correct numbers and resumed putting forth the conclusions of her investigation.

“Therefore, it follows that you either a) know of some secret supply of this plant that’s growing somewhere that no one else, except perhaps the perpetrator of this crime, is aware of, or b)–” The Professor finished dialing the combination and the lock clicked open. The little LED indicator light went from red to green. “ - you’ve found a way to retrieve things–living
things, even, by manipulating...
time.
” She barely smiled and turned the doorknob, pushing the door open. Samantha held her breath. One of the lesser agents reached in and flicked the light switch on... and found nothing.

Well, it wasn’t exactly nothing.
Samantha let out her breath, closing her eyes for a split second in relief. Agent Stiles looked puzzled, her usually perfect composure somewhat shaken and uncertain. She looked all around, her hawk-like eyes seeking out the slightest sign of a cover-up. She bit her lip.

“Check it out,” she said quietly to her subordinates, who began to move around the room. It was nothing like it had been. The time machine had somehow miraculously vanished, and in its place were dozens of artificial trees. The agents explored the entire room, examining the virtually identical devices and shrugging at each other until at last Stiles spoke up.

“What are these devices, Professor Smythe?” she snapped.

“Well,” The Professor said slowly, “they’re, ah, they’re what I’ve been working on lately. Ah–look,” he bent down to the controls of the nearest one. “You see the readout? Here we have numbers indicating the intake of carbon dioxide. And the other set of numbers is oxygen output. They’re, ah, essentially artificial trees.”

Stiles stared at Smythe, who smiled hopefully. She was not happy.

“It’s, well, I’ve been sort of trying to keep it a secret, you see. They take in carbon dioxide, process it just like plants, and release oxygen into the atmosphere. The extra, er, carbon and such is stored here, in the base.” The Professor knocked on the hollow metal bottom of a ‘tree.’ “I planned to patent it, actually. Maybe retire somewhere nice, like the Caribbean, you know? In any case, as you can see, there’s nothing here related to
Phylathimus Phylathum
or, eh, any other sort of
real
plant.”

Stiles stood, listening, and fumed. It was plain to see that the perfectionist investigator had not found the necessary evidence to prove whatever theories had been cooking in her head, and it sounded to Samantha as if those theories had been dangerously close to the truth. However The Professor had pulled this off, it was sheer genius. The artificial trees were so ‘out of left field’ that they had even surprised Samantha, and defending himself about the plant,
Phylathimus Phylathum,
was another brilliant distraction. Neither of these things really had much to do directly with time or time machines, but they were believable eccentric pursuits for Smythe to convincingly feign a passion for.

“Grab a few of these for our lab,” Stiles bitterly chewed her words. “Professor,” she spun around quickly, trying to penetrate his soft old British eyes with her razor-edged glare, “I’m afraid I owe you an apology.” She sighed and relaxed a little. “We’ll return these as soon as possible, within the week, I promise. We’ll also have all your notes, books, computers, files and lab samples back within that time. I’m sorry if this has been an inconvenience to you. We’re just trying to follow every lead or theory we can come up with to try to apprehend Ms. Smart’s assailant. I’m sure you understand.”

“Certainly,” Smythe said calmly. “Of course, as always, I offer whatever I can to help you. I just don’t see what you’re looking for here, agent, and I think perhaps your methods of obtaining assistance might be a little, er, extreme,
if you know what I mean.” Stiles momentarily looked at the floor, then back up at The Professor.

“Yes, well, as I said... I do apologize.” She turned to her subordinates. “Have any and all evidence brought immediately to the Canal Street labs,” she said curtly. The men nodded and two of them began carrying an artificial tree out of the room and toward the lobby stairway (it was definitely a two-man job). Stiles nodded and began to walk out the door. “Anytime you want to talk, Samantha,” she said as an aside. Samantha nodded silently.

“Agent Stiles?” The Professor called after her. She turned in the doorway to acknowledge him. “Does this mean I can have tea and biscuits somewhere without being on film?” Smythe grinned a hopeful grin.

“Pretty hard in this town,” Stiles replied. “Just ask Jordan Anderson.” She smiled slightly and then was gone.

Christmas morning came with something of a whimper, though of course ever-commercial New York City did its best to put the ‘bang’ into it. Even in Brooklyn there were Santas roaming the streets, advertising holiday sales for electronics stores or hawking candy canes to bored neighborhood children. Samantha and her mother had gone to meet Jason for a holiday brunch down at Katina’s on Seventh Avenue, and had enjoyed some eggs and toast in relative peace.

Jason and Cindy had made plans to go to a party, which suited Samantha just fine. By noon she had the house to herself and was formulating a plan to get to the Fourteenth Street station by two, and she hoped that her friends would be able to escape any holiday duties that might inhibit them from meeting to commence the next step in whatever plan Professor Smythe had cooking.