The Bellbottom Incident Read online

  “It’s not the most efficient and cost-effective method.”

  I sat up on the couch again, though I couldn’t see her in the dark. “Hold on. What would be more efficient?”

  “The approach he’s using for the seven volunteers he enlisted for his study. Start with a person’s birth date—a STEWie run guaranteed to fail, thus saving energy and resources—then shift the arrival date back day by day until History allows the person to jump. Or he could run a binary algorithm between his birth date and his date of conception. You know, start at the halfway point and see if the run takes, then halve the next time period, and so on.”

  “That is strange, I suppose, that he’s using a different algorithm for himself than for his volunteers…Perhaps there’s a technical reason for it. But wouldn’t it be funny if it turned out that he was curious about something, too, for all his protestations?” I slid back down into the couch. “His family’s all the way in California, though, so it probably has nothing to do with them. He did seem very familiar with the layout of the physics building—perhaps he’s researching some finer point of STEWie’s development and it’s legit after all.”

  “That’s what I was thinking—that he’s got a side research topic that he doesn’t want to tell people about for fear of his idea being stolen.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t be the first.”

  “Speaking of ideas, I still can’t get over that blackboard in the physics grad student office. Young Dr. Mooney and Dr. Rojas are certainly nothing like I would have imagined. I pictured them as being very serious and focused. Also, mustaches?”

  We shared another chuckle over this. Then, in somewhat of a change of topic, Abigail added, “Too bad Nate couldn’t come with us. He would have enjoyed seeing them. But then he’s already here.”

  And so he was. I did the math. “He’s five years old and living up in Duluth with his grandparents while his parents finish up college. His mom had him while she was still in high school, did you know that? It was a bit of a scandal apparently.”

  “Huh. I thought I was the only one with a weird childhood.”

  “Everyone’s childhood is weird…Even if it felt idyllic at the time, when you look back and think about things you realize it wasn’t always as idyllic as it seemed. That doesn’t stop the nostalgia, though.” Then I remembered that it was Abigail I was talking to. I wished I had a box of cookies to offer her. “Of course, most childhoods aren’t as weird as yours, I suppose.”

  “Don’t worry, I get what you’re saying. Besides, I think Sabina has us all beat when it comes to weird childhoods.”

  “She does, doesn’t she?”

  As we drifted into silence, I rubbed my eyes and didn’t manage to suppress a yawn—the time-travel lag had kicked in with a wallop. Still, I fought to stay awake, my senses attuned to the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Meanwhile, Abigail’s breathing had turned to a soft snore. There were plenty of other sounds, too: Halloween-related joviality drifted in from outside, the large fridge in the food-prep part of the cafeteria crackled occasionally, and the water pipes made mysterious noises, as water pipes tend to do. I started making a mental list of what we should do if Sabina didn’t appear by morning. We’d broaden our search beyond campus to all of Thornberg, tape up posters telling her to come back to the Open Book, enlist the help of campus security…

  The next thing to happen was a voice crackling in through the two-way radio. Groggily, I fought the coat to retrieve the radio from one of its pockets.

  It was Xave. He sounded a little hoarse but jaunty. “Morning! I’m a little worse for wear”—crackle—“what a party it was.”

  The transmission was garbled with interference.

  “More importantly”—crackle—“found—”

  “Who’s on this channel?”

  “Your—”

  I sat up, pressed the button on my end, and commanded, “Can you repeat that, Xave? Over.”

  “I said, I think I found your Sally.”

  10

  Abigail and I grabbed our things and hurried out of the cafeteria, attracting odd looks from arriving kitchen staff, but eager to see Sabina. The plaza was deserted in the chilly dawn of a new day, other than for a few volunteers setting up a polling station outside the Registrar’s Office for tomorrow’s election. At the other end of the plaza, St. Olaf’s Hall looked out of place in the Science Quad next to department and classroom buildings. As we went up its brick path, the administrator in me noted that the steps leading to the front door were not handicap-accessible; if the building had been of any historical significance rather than just a five-floor cement block, a ramp could have been added and the front door widened. Instead, new student housing units would go up on the east side of campus and the building would be torn down. But that was years in the future. For now it was here, stained cement and all.

  We went in through the unlocked front door. There was no hall monitor in the small common area just inside, only three students asleep in easy chairs, all of them still in last night’s Halloween costumes. An old-fashioned-looking TV with a rabbit-ears antenna showed only silent static.

  Following Xave’s directions, Abigail and I took the stairs to the fifth floor—the elevator had an Out of Service sign taped to it—and knocked on the door that bore the number 510, then entered after Xave shouted out a peppy, “Come in!”

  Abigail and I looked around the room.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  Xave was draped over his desk chair, his legs stretched out on either side, his head resting on its back like he was a tired thinker. The room was otherwise empty.

  Dr. Little came out of the bathroom, drying his hair with a towel. “Ah, there you are.”

  “You said you found her, Xave. Where is she?” I repeated. I almost bent down to check under the bed.

  “Sally? I did,” Xave said tipsily from under the puffy Einstein wig. His breath stank of beer and cheese. “Or at least I think I found her.”

  Dr. Little took over. “She must have come here to St. Olaf’s yesterday evening, after Abigail caught a glimpse of her in the plaza, leaving. If only we hadn’t wasted that hour by the Open Book doing nothing…I don’t know if she came here looking for help, or if she was drawn to the spot because it will one day house the Time Travel Engineering lab.”

  “It will? Really?” Xave said, almost toppling off his chair in surprise. Luckily, in his state the odds were good that he wouldn’t remember hearing that particular fact.

  Dr. Little ignored the interruption. He looked alert, like the night’s sleep had been restful, and there was a fresh T-shirt under his denim vest. Abigail’s clothes and mine were rumpled from spending the night on the restroom couches, and I hadn’t even thought to bring a toothbrush along, but I didn’t care, not if we were on the verge of finding Sabina. He went on: “Besides being co-ed, this dorm is mixed between senior undergrads and grad students. The women undergrads are on the first two floors, and the men are on the third and fourth. The top floor, where the rooms have private bathrooms, is reserved for grad students like Mooney here who—”

  “Can’t afford to live off campus. Also, no car. Hold on, my visitors…from the future…” the professor-to-be said, stumbling a bit over the words. “Let me close the door so that no one overhears your…futuristic stuff.” He rose up from the chair, staggered where he stood, and leaned over to shut the door Abigail and I had left open in our hurry. He tumbled back into the chair, almost missing it, and murmured something about needing coffee. Besides the desk, with its stacks of textbooks and notebooks, Xave’s tiny room held a bed, a floor lamp, and a dresser. There were posters on the walls (one of Jane Fonda as Barbarella, another of the periodic table) and a pile of dirty clothes not too well hidden under the bed. The trash bin by the desk needed emptying and was overflowing with empty snack bags and candy wrappers—Xave had a bit of a sweet tooth, which would contribute to his health problems in later years.

  “It seems a woman senior took Sally
in for the night,” Dr. Little went on, still with the same maddening deliberation. “There were people going in and out of the dorm all day because of the Halloween party downstairs in the recreation room, so I suppose Sally wouldn’t have stood out—lots of people needed a place to crash for the night. What did you say was the senior’s name, Xave, the one who took Sally in?”

  “Gil—Gilb—why can’t people have simpler names?” Xave finally spit out in one long breath, “Gilberte Dubois. Canadian. Room 104. The undergrads share rooms. Gilberte’s roommate, Jenny, said a freshman wandered in sometime during the early evening. They guessed that she was a foreign exchange student.”

  I wanted to know everything. “Are we sure it’s her? Did Jenny say what her name was? What did she look like?”

  “Jenny said that she—the freshman, not Jenny—was wearing a joke Halloween costume. An ancient Roman scientist. A lab coat over a dress and sandals. A Roman scientist,” he repeated, chuckling over the concept.

  “Never mind the costume. Then what happened?” I asked.

  “Jenny and Gilberte lent her a pillow and blanket for the night and let her use Jenny’s bed.” Xave added in a slow afterthought, “Jenny wasn’t interested.”

  “In sleep?” Abigail had gone to perch on the edge of the windowsill, as if needing to sit down to keep her impatience at bay. “Jenny was at the party all night?”

  “She was, but I meant in going out with me. I asked her to join me for a breakfast coffee, but she said no.” Xave looked saddened by the memory.

  Even if I hadn’t known for a fact that he would end up finding somebody who was perfect for him, no matter their later marital issues, I wouldn’t have been interested in his dating problems at the moment. I breathed a sigh of relief. “So she’s in Room 104 downstairs?”

  We had found her. It was over. I hadn’t solved the mystery of my parentage, but that could wait for another day.

  “I didn’t think she’d come here.” Dr. Little said, still standing immobile. Why wasn’t he gathering his sleeping mat and other things from the floor so we could pick up Sabina and be on our way? Was he time-stuck in the open bathroom door, towel in hand?

  Apparently not, only dissatisfied with himself. “I should have instigated a search of the premises last night. My lack of sleep contributed to a poor handling of the problem. I apologize. I assumed she’d go back to the cafeteria restroom to sleep. It seemed logical.”

  I didn’t bother reminding him that like he himself had pointed out, people rarely act on logic and more often on what feels right. Coming to St. Olaf had felt right to Sabina.

  Xave’s white Einstein wig had slid over his forehead to the bridge of his nose. His head was down on the back of his chair again. I thought I detected the faint sound of snoring from underneath the wig.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said to Dr. Little. This was no time to coddle his bruised academic ego. “Let’s go get her. Room 104, you said?”

  He shook his head. “You’re not understanding.”

  “What are we not understanding?” Abigail asked.

  Xave gave a half snore, which woke him up. He mumbled from under the Einstein wig, “They’ve all gone…Udo’s book club.”

  He wasn’t making any sense. More worrisomely, neither was Dr. Little. I looked from one to the other. “What book club? What are you two talking about?”

  Dr. Little draped his towel over the bathroom doorknob. “The students in the dorm’s book club—they’ve gone away…and Sally left with them.”

  “Where did they go?”

  Xave’s Einstein wig slid to the floor and his head shot up. He said quite lucidly, “Udo, Gilberte, and the others left bright and early this morning on a midterm break to parts unknown. Your Sally is not on campus anymore.”

  11

  “We’ll just have to get a car ourselves and go after her. Dr. Mooney—I mean Xave—do you own a car?” I turned to him before remembering that he had already mentioned that he didn’t. “Well, we’ll have to get one somehow. Or a bus or taxi, if we can catch—”

  “That’s linear thinking,” Dr. Little cut me off. He still looked pained that he had failed to discover that Sabina had been so close, only four floors down, and angry at himself for having missed something obvious—for the second time in as many days. I guessed that he was worried about looking foolish in front of Xavier Mooney, who would one day have a vote as to whether tenure would be offered to our young professor from California. I doubted Xavier would judge Dr. Little on an incident that had happened thirty-some years in the past and which he had never once mentioned. But it did make me wonder yet again why he’d never said anything about meeting the three of us.

  “You have a better idea?” I asked Dr. Little as I joined Abigail and him by the window, where he was rolling up his sleeping mat.

  “Obviously we have to go after her,” Dr. Little said, maneuvering the mat into the duffel. “Just not in a car or bus.”

  For a moment I thought he was suggesting that we find a helicopter or plane, but Abigail caught on to his meaning. “The Slingshot.”

  “The what?” Xave asked from across the room.

  Dr. Little shot him a look, and Xave met his stare through half-closed eyelids. “I do believe I’ll go downstairs in search of that cup of coffee. I can tell when I’m not…wanted.”

  Once the door had swung shut behind him, I nodded. “I get it. We’ll jump ahead and catch up with—did you say it was a book club?—wherever they have gone.” Xave had said parts unknown, but I assumed it was just a figure of speech. With Slingshot 2.0, we could instantly meet up with the book club; it would only be a matter of calculating the coordinates. We had located Sabina; we just needed to jump ahead to meet her. Only…

  “What is it, Julia?” Abigail asked.

  “Don’t you two think it’s odd that Sabina was able to hitch a ride?”

  “You’re worried she’ll never be heard from again because she got into a strange car? What could be safer than being in the company of a book club, for heaven’s sake?” Dr. Little said.

  “It’s just…a bad feeling.” I knew he didn’t think much of feelings in the context of time-travel mechanics, so I attempted a different explanation. “As a time traveler, she shouldn’t be able to interact quite this much with the locals, should she? I mean, we did in Pompeii, but that was because most of the town did not have long to live, as awful as that sounds. And we fit into near time, but she doesn’t, not yet.”

  “I wouldn’t read too much into it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that just as you can unexpectedly become time-stuck, the opposite can happen as well. You waltz with ease into a situation in which you have no logical place. Sometimes the bold move accomplishes what the stealthy one can’t. Sabina walked into St. Olaf’s and everyone mistook her for a freshman in a Roman costume. Could anyone have predicted that?”

  Abigail had a different explanation. “Weren’t people in the seventies on drugs much of the time—LSD and so on?”

  “Well, I don’t know about much of the time,” I said.

  “Maybe everyone is just so used to being in a haze and seeing weird things that a person showing up out of nowhere is no big deal. Speaking of which, you don’t think Xave is high on something, do you?”

  “Just alcohol,” I said.

  “Did you know LSD stands for lysergic acid diethylamide and is made from a rye fungus?” Dr. Little said in an educational (but not very helpful at the moment) note. “It is rather unfortunate that Mooney chose last night to get inebriated. He just kept repeating that they—the book club members—were headed to a tree.”

  “I’ll get him back,” I said. “He’s probably downstairs—I noticed a coffee pot by the TV.”

  He wasn’t downstairs. He was slumped against the wall just outside the room, on the hallway floor with his knees drawn up, snoring.

  “Gone east,” he mumbled when we tried to shake him awake. “Tree.”

  I left Abigail and Dr. Little to t
he task and went downstairs to fetch coffee. The three students in their Halloween costumes were still asleep in front of the old-fashioned-looking TV. I reached for one of the mugs stacked on a tray next to the coffee percolator, then changed my mind.

  The door of Room 104 was shut. I hesitated, then raised a hand to knock, figuring that asking Gilberte’s roommate, Jenny, where the book club had gone might be faster than trying to sober up Xave. History had other plans for me; my knuckles barely grazed the wood, hard as I tried. There was an ABBA poster on the door, with the members of the Swedish pop group paired off on a park bench, Anni-Frid and Benny smooching and Agnetha and Björn side by side. The poster seemed to mock me, as if it were underlining that I was misplaced in time.

  I went back to plan A—sobering up Xave. I softly walked past the sleeping students to the humming percolator, which one of them must have turned on before drifting off in an easy chair. The mugs looked reasonably clean, if mismatched and slightly dinged. Just typical dorm items.

  I carried the mug back up the four flights of stairs to find Xave still slumped against the wall, gently snoring. Dr. Little was standing with his hands at his waist, like a two-sided teacup, tapping an impatient foot. Abigail turned up her hands at my approach. “Are we sure he’s not high on something?”

  I squatted down with the mug in my hand. Xave’s eyes were soon open, though he was still a bit greenish around the cheeks. It took all three of us to pull him to his feet and steady him. Once we had Xave safely back inside his room and in the chair and he had imbibed more of the coffee, Abigail knelt down next to him. “Prof— I mean, uh, Xave. Where did they take Sally?”

  He looked at Abigail with moist eyes and gave a small shrug, not of lack of concern but an indication of his limited knowledge of the matter. “East. Tree.”

  “The East Coast, you mean? But where?”

  He shook his head.

  Abigail’s eyes were wide. I explained that I had no luck knocking on Jenny’s door and voiced the problem. “The East Coast—that’s like ten states and a thousand miles.”