Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) (15 page)

“Your teacher’s right,” Tony said.

“She does lots of work for women’s suffer— so women can vote,” Charlotte said. “Papa and Uncle Curtis say it’s nonsense, that women don’t belong at voting places.”

Mr. Solomon lifted his hand and brushed a clump of stray hair our of her face. “Well, I disagree. And I have a feeling your teacher’s efforts will pay off before long. By the time you’re old enough to vote, I bet you’ll be able to.”

“Really?” Charlotte searched his face for a sign he was joking.

“I think so.” He shifted her on his lap.

They talked about all sorts of things—Charlotte’s papa, Dewey, and bossy Mabel, Mr. Solomon’s—Tony’s—job in a big office building. He said he helped people find smarter ways—what a funny thing to say—to run their businesses. He’d traveled all over the world. He’d even flown in an airplane!

“Wow! Do you know the Wrights?” A friend of Uncle Curtis’ knew them, and one time he took Charlotte out to Huffman Field to watch them fly. It was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen.

“Uh... not personally.”

“I wish I could fly in an aeroplane,” Charlotte said.

“Maybe you will someday. I bet they’ll keep building bigger and faster planes. Ones that can carry hundreds of people, and fly over the ocean in just a few hours.”

“Woooooow!” Charlotte drew the word out. Maybe she’d get to go flying one day. Maybe she’d get to help build better airplanes. “Papa tells me I have an overactive imagination when I say things like that.” She twisted around so she could see Tony’s face. Even behind the glasses, his eyes were as blue as the sky on a pretty day. “Do you have any children?”

“I used to have a little girl.”

“Used to?”

A little muscle in his chin twitched. “Yeah. She ah, was killed in a car accident.”

“Oh.” Something in his voice told her he wasn’t telling the whole truth, but she shouldn’t ask any more questions about it. “My mama died when I was three. She had consumption.”

Tony’s fingers twiddled in the quilt, as if searching for something to grab. He gazed out the window, then into the far corner of the attic, where it was darkest. “Sucks, doesn’t it.” His voice came out harsh.

“Sucks?” Charlotte searched his face. He had a funny way of talking, and his words didn’t make sense.

“I mean it’s... hard to deal with.” His hands stilled on the quilt over her hips.

She snuggled closer against him. “What was she like? Your little girl?”

His arm tightened around her, and in the long silence the rain drumming on the roof and the water rushing by outside seemed to grow louder.

“She was beautiful.” His voice went soft. “At least she was to me.” He blinked a lot, fast.

“I’m sorry,” Charlotte mumbled. It was what people always said when they learned about Mama.

“Yeah, me too.” He fingered the edge of his glasses. “She liked to read, like you. And she liked to draw, though I think she knew she wasn’t very good at it. She did well in school when she wanted to. She played basketball, too. And when she grew up, she wanted to be a compu- uh, a mathematician.”

“Golly! Papa would say that’s foolishness, like me wanting to be an inventor.”

“Why does he say that?”

“Because I’m a girl.” She tried not to pout.

“So?”

“Because... I don’t know. You don’t think it’s foolish?”

“Not at all.” He rubbed his hand up and down the quilt where it covered her arm. “Women can do anything. Even be ast- uh, pilots. Aviators.”

“Like Harriet Quimby,” Charlotte breathed.

“Sure. Maybe someday we’ll even have a woman president. Are you warmer now?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Good. Because I have to put you down.” He scooted her off his lap. “I’ve got to get something to drink.” He rose and walked to the nearest crate. “If I could just find something to catch some rainwater in...”

She settled against the wooden box and pulled the blanket and his jacket tightly around herself, then craned her neck and turned around. He picked at the crate’s lid. “Damn thing’s nailed tighter’n hell.” He moved to another crate a few feet away, then the next.

“What are you looking for?” Charlotte asked.

“A screwdriver, crowbar, something to open this with.”

“I’ll help.” Clutching his jacket and the quilt to her with one hand, she rose and tiptoed around the staircase hole. Water filled it up to the second step from the top.

At the other end of the attic, she found a box full of fascinating junk—ashtrays, empty candle holders, electrical wires. But before she reached it something shiny on the floor near the window caught her eye. A copper coin. She reached for it—

“Aha,” Tony said. Charlotte’s head flipped around. He’d found a crate someone had already opened.

He lifted the lid and held up a red and white, soup-can-sized canister of tobacco. The kind her papa bought. “Perfect.” He pulled the lid off and dumped the tobacco into the opened crate. “Sorry, Mr. Goodwin, but we need some water.” He walked to the window, eased it open, then wedged the can under the sash. “Now we wait.” He scooped Charlotte’s dress off the floor and carried it to the stairwell, leaving a wet trail.

“What are you doing?” She gripped her quilt tighter.

“Laying these out to dry.” He held her dress over the opening and wrung the water out, then spread it on the floor. He did the same with her coat. “They’ll take a while to dry in this cold, but there’s not much else we can do.” He returned to the window and sat, watching the tobacco can as if that would make it fill faster. Charlotte started to join him when she remembered the coin on the floor.

She picked it up. A quarter. Finding a penny was supposed to be lucky, so a quarter must be even luckier. She hoped it was. They needed all the luck they could get.

She frowned as she held it up to the light coming in from the window. It looked like a quarter, but the picture on it was all wrong. Instead of Lady Liberty, it had a picture of George Washington, with I
N
G
OD
W
E
T
RUST
beside his head. But it said QUARTER DOLLAR right beneath him.

She flipped the coin over, and the other side was even stranger. It showed an outline of Ohio, with the Wrights’ aeroplane, and a man wearing what looked like a big, puffy diving suit. Above the aeroplane it said “Birthplace of Aviation Pioneers.”

She’d never seen a quarter like that. She turned it again and angled it.

At the top it said OHIO 1803. She supposed that was all right, for that was when Ohio became a state; they’d learned that in school. But what could the number on the bottom mean? It should be the year the coin was made, but that couldn’t be right. 2002 was almost a hundred years away! She scooted closer to the window and tilted the quarter in the light, in case she’d read it wrong.

It still read 2002. She squinched up her nose. It must mean something else, or it had to be a mistake.

She looked at Tony. He stared out the window, hadn’t seen her. She closed her fist around the quarter. Maybe it was his. Giving it back was the right thing to do, but she didn’t want to.

She searched the floor. Maybe she could find more funny money. There were no more coins in sight, but a thick square of brown leather lay next to one of the crates. A billfold. Probably Mr. Solomon’s. She picked it up, and it flipped open.

From a white card with typing on it, a photo of someone stared back at her. Him. In color. When she tipped it in the light from the window, tiny rainbows danced around a circle thing beside it. She gasped.

Tony’s head snapped around. He sat frozen with a dumbfounded look on his face, like something important had just happened, but he didn’t know what to do. When he spoke, he drew out the words slowly. “Oh... shit.”

“It’s beautiful,” Charlotte breathed. Unable to tear her gaze away, she studied the strange card. Ohio Driver License, it said across the top. He strode across the attic and snatched the wallet out of her hand before she could read further. “Mr. Solomon?” she asked as he jammed it into his pocket. “What’s the pretty card for?”

“It’s, uh...” His teeth pressed at the tip of his tongue.

“Mr.— Tony? Where are you from?”

He clamped his mouth shut for a second before he answered. “Not far from here.”

She wasn’t sure she believed him. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” Pictures were just black and white and gray unless someone colored them... but his photograph looked...
real
. And what made the rainbows? “Where did you get it?”

He stared out the window, and his own image from the 1954 wanted poster flashed through his mind. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Sought by the Society for disruption of the fabric of time and space.
If the kid found out he was from the future, would he be violating their non-involvement directive?

“Yes I would.” She gave him a smile to light up the room, revealing a gap between her front teeth that somehow made her even cuter.

Relief and apprehension warred in Tony’s gut. He’d already come close to slipping up a couple times—once, by starting to say Bethany wanted to be a computer programmer, and again when he almost said astronaut.

Charlotte’s silent gaze implored him. She
would
believe him, no matter what he told her. Her big brown eyes met his. Why were they so familiar? It was going to drive him nuts until he figured it out. With a sigh, he lowered himself to the floor next to her.

She held one hand curled in a fist, and slowly opened it when she saw him looking. “I found this, too,” she said in a small voice. “Is it yours?”

He studied the coin lying in her palm. “Yeah.” He squinted to read the date. 2002.
Shit.
What must she think?

“It’s a real quarter, isn’t it?”

Her eyes were so solemn, her face so earnest beneath the bedraggled hair. He’d never been a good liar. “Yeah. It’s real.”

She stared up at him, waiting. So trusting.

He’d seen her studying his clothing. Men’s fashion hadn’t changed a great deal in the past century, but there were still minor details that had to be off. Good thing small, round glasses were in style when he got his–if he’d worn the plastic-rim ones he used to have, she’d really find him strange.

The hell with it. Tell her the truth.
After all, it wasn’t like anyone would believe her if she told. They’d put it down to—what had she said? An overactive imagination. Sure.

He sat beside her, turning the wallet over in his hands. What should he say?
I’m from a hundred years in the future, Charlotte. That’s how I know about airplanes, and...
The wallet flipped open, revealing his license. He slid it out of its clear pocket and handed it to her. “Here.”

“What is it?” She tilted it back and forth.

He explained he had to have it to be allowed to drive a car. “It’s so pretty,” she said in an awed voice. “How did they get all those colors on you? Did someone paint it?”

He shook his head. “Read it. And tell me what you think.”

She continued to turn the card around, and over, flexed it between her hands. “Why, it’s made of something like... picture film. Only harder.”

Her hands finally stilled as she examined the card further. “Anton J. Solomon, fifteen thirty-one Rambling Ivy Trail, Patter—” She looked up. “Where’s Patterson Hills?”

“Not far from here. It’s called something different now. I don’t remember what.”

She turned back to the card. “Birthdate...” She flipped the card over, and over again, then scrubbed at his birthday with a finger. “Your card has a mistake on it. Like the quarter.”

“It’s not a mistake.”

“But...”

A series of emotions played across her face. Intense concentration. Bewilderment. Disbelief. Wonder. “But... if this is right, you won’t even be born for... for a long time.”

“That’s right.”

“You mean...” Her jaw slowly slid open. “You’re from the future?”

He nodded slowly.

“But...” She looked at him, then at the card, then back again. “That sounds like something out of one of Miss Jessup’s books.”

He leaned back against a crate. “Let me guess. H.G. Wells?”

She gulped. “How did you know?”

Tony pulled one knee up to his chest. “People still read him in the twenty-first century.”

“Twenty-first century?” She jumped up, holding the blanket, and ran to the window, angling her neck to see. Then she scurried to the other end of the attic, and did the same. “Where’s your time machine?”

“I don’t have one.” He squinted at the floor. “I’m just now beginning to figure it out, but apparently it’s some sort of psychic phenomenon.”

She took three slow steps toward him. “What’s a psychic...”

“Powers of the mind.” Damn, was he actually saying this? And she believed it? He had trouble believing it himself, but the longer he remained in 1913, and the more he talked to her, the more real it became. “You probably shouldn’t tell anyone, or they might throw you in the loony bin.”

“Do they have loony bins in the future?”

“Yeah, but no one calls them that and only people who’re considered dangerous go there.” Yeah. Like someone who could transform history.

Charlotte sat and scooted close to him. “What are things like in the future?” She turned her oddly familiar, honey-brown eyes to his. “When do women get to vote?”

“Nineteen twenty.”

She held out the 2002 quarter. “Why is there a diver on it?”

He took the quarter and they studied it together. “It’s not a diver. He’s an astronaut.”

“What’s an astronaut?”

In for a quarter, in for a hundred bucks.
He tried his best to explain space travel. “The first man to orbit the earth and the first man to walk on the moon are both from Ohio. That’s why there’s an astronaut on our quarter.” He told her about airplanes that could carry hundreds of people, and about automated teller machines, radio and television, air conditioning.

The questions continued. She sat in the circle of his arms and stared up at him with rapt devotion. She was there, alive, for him to speak to, because he’d pulled her from the water. The knowledge gave him a heady feeling. In saving her life he’d done something important. Something that might make up for letting Bethany go to that party, a small atonement of sorts.