CHAPTER TWELVE

Chocolate at the Time Traveller’s House

We told our parents we were participating in an educational weekend project for the repository—which, if you thought about it, was true. Dr. Rust gave us forms for them to sign.

“Though I don’t see why I need a permission slip to visit my own aunt for the weekend,” said Jaya, once we had all reassembled in Doc’s office.

“Because the rules apply to you too, young lady, much as you’d like to believe otherwise,” said Ms. Minnian, putting our forms in a folder.

Jaya winked at me behind her back. “You talked to my aunt, right, Doc?”

“She knows you’re coming. I caught her at the office, but we didn’t have much time to talk. I told her you’d explain when you get there,” said Dr. Rust, handing Ms. Minnian a fist-size metal globe. “Will you do the honors, Lucy? You’re so precise.”

“Of course,” said Ms. Minnian. “Stand over here by the window, you two. No, closer together. You’ve both got your backpacks?” I swiveled slightly to show her mine. She lifted the globe to her eye as if she were looking at us through an old-fashioned camera’s viewfinder. “Get closer together—I don’t want to leave parts of you behind. Leo, put your arm around Jaya’s shoulders. That’s right.”

Ms. Minnian lowered the globe. I stood there awkwardly with my arm around Jaya—her shoulders felt surprisingly sharp—while Ms. Minnian fiddled with some rings on the globe’s surface.

“Jaya, what’s Shanti’s address?” she asked.

“Number 127 Sidney Terrace.”

“Is that the north or south side of the street?”

“North.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“Hang on—here’s the Time Traveller’s address,” said Dr. Rust, scribbling something on a blank call slip and handing it to me. “Travel safely, kids. Warm regards to your aunt, Jaya.”

Ms. Minnian lifted the globe to her eye again. “All right. Stand still now. I said still, Jaya! Don’t fidget, you could lose a finger. Ready, you two?”

“Ready,” said Jaya and I together.

Ms. Minnian pressed something on the globe and the world blinked black.

• • •

A second later—or maybe a lifetime—the world went bright again. I found myself standing on something unstable, looking down at a small living room from an odd angle. It was evening. Little lamps with colored shades spilled pools of cozy light around the room.

“Jaya, really—your shoes!” said a woman with an English accent. “Aren’t you a little old to be bouncing on the furniture?”

I looked down, clutching Jaya’s shoulder. We were standing on a velvet couch with carved wooden arms. I still felt like myself, only more unsteady.

Jaya shrugged out of my grasp, tumbling me off my feet like a load of laundry. She jumped off the couch and threw her arms around the woman. “Hi, Auntie Shanti!”

“Hi yourself, incorrigible,” said her aunt, hugging her back.

Shanti Rao had her niece’s snapping black eyes and long thin arms. She wore her black hair pulled back firmly, but I could almost see it scheming to get loose. “You must be Leo,” she said, holding out her hand. With her accent, she sounded like the narrator on a Masterpiece Theater program.

“Thank you for having us,” I said, taking her hand to shake it. She pulled me to my feet and looked me up and down.

“Too tall to sleep on the sofa,” she said. “Pity. I’ve only the one guest bed.”

“He can have it,” said Jaya. “He’s the guest.”

“I don’t mind the floor,” I said. “Really, Ms. Rao.”

“Well, we’ll sort it out later. Please call me Auntie Shanti. Hungry?”

Jaya and I nodded.

“Good. Fish and chips? And then you can tell me what on earth the two of you are doing here.”

• • •

Richmond, where Auntie Shanti lived, had bendy streets lined with houses made of red or yellow brick. Some were whitewashed, some trimmed with stone. Some had arched doors or bow windows, some had slate roofs and little gardens in front. It was very pretty and very old.

But it wasn’t raining. Wasn’t it supposed to rain all the time in England? The air felt cool and pleasant.

Jaya’s aunt bought fish and chips “to take away” at a little shop on one of the wider streets. We ate sitting on a bench in a park where a few people were walking their dogs in the cool evening air.

I bit through the crisp crust. It was salty, vinegary, and greasy, in a good way. My teeth met in tender, steaming fish. “This is awesome,” I said. “Why don’t we have this stuff at home?”

“I know, right?” said Jaya. “There’s that place in the Village where I used to go with Simon, but it’s not really the same.”

“You have better pizza in New York, though,” said Auntie Shanti, crumpling up her empty fish paper. “Now, tell me what brings you here.”

I ate my fish while Jaya explained.

“Clever boy,” said Auntie Shanti when she finished.

“You won’t tell Pem-Po, will you? I promised Dr. Rust you wouldn’t,” said Jaya quickly.

“No, of course not,” said her aunt. “The Wells time machine belongs to the New York repository.”

“Doesn’t the Burton have its own time machine anyway?” asked Jaya.

“Well, yes. A few of them,” said Shanti. “But that never stops any repository from wanting another. Besides, the ones at the Burton are weaker than the H. G. Wells machine.”

“Of course—that makes sense,” said Jaya.

“What are you guys talking about?” I asked.

“Each machine follows the principles of its underlying fiction,” said Jaya.

“What does that mean?”

She licked a crumb off her upper lip. “Say you want to travel faster than light. You would need to find a spacecraft from a science-fiction story where faster-than-light travel is possible. If you tried to go faster than light in a rocket from a novel where faster-than-light travel isn’t possible, it wouldn’t work.”

“But I thought Einstein had proved that nothing can ever go faster than light,” I objected.

“Yes, he did, for all practical purposes. That’s why the books are science fiction. It’s what makes the Special Collections special. The objects in the Wells Bequest don’t exist in the boring old ordinary world. Or they don’t exist yet.”

“The same’s true of the objects in the other Special Collections—the ones in other repositories, like the Burton,” said Auntie Shanti.

I thought about it. “So some of the things in the Special Collections violate the laws of nature?”

“Of course,” said Jaya. “The whole Grimm Collection, for starters. You’ve got wishing rings and flying carpets and magic tables that make food appear.”

“Okay, sure, but that’s fairy tales. They’re not supposed to make logical sense. Science fiction is different. It’s supposed to be . . . I don’t know. It’s supposed to be possible.”

“All the science-fiction objects are possible, in their own terms,” said Jaya. “They do obey the rules of nature—just different rules of nature.”

“But what if those rules contradict each other?” I objected. “The stories all have different rules. They shouldn’t all be able to coexist in our world. It’s impossible.”

Jaya shrugged. “Would you really want to live in a world where only the possible is possible?”

I laughed. “You’re right, I wouldn’t. You can be pretty impossible yourself, but I’m glad you’re here.”

“Thanks! You’re pretty impossible too. Especially that curl.”

I blushed and pushed it out of my eyes. “So how does all this work for the Burton’s time machines?” I asked quickly.

“Same as any other science-fiction objects,” said Jaya. “They follow the laws from their stories of origin.”

“Which are what?”

“Well, one of the Burton’s time machines, the Tuck machine, comes from a can’t-change-the-past story,” said Auntie Shanti. “Whenever the characters in the Tuck novel try to use their time machine to change the past, they fail. They try to shoot Hitler and the gun misfires or they try to launch a missile, but they trip before they can reach the on switch—that sort of thing. According to the rules in Tuck’s book, you can’t change the past. So the Tuck machine really is only good for tourism. You couldn’t use it to correct a mistake or prevent 9/11 or anything like that. And you can’t even use it to collect souvenirs—it won’t let you take anything home with you.”

“What about the others?” I asked.

“The other two are both weak also. The one from Tomorrow’s Tomorrows Today only goes to the future. It doesn’t have a past setting. Which means if you use it to go to the future, you’re stuck there,” said Auntie Shanti. “Some people would say it doesn’t really count as a time machine.”

“And the third one?”

“The Kerr machine? That one’s a little more interesting. It’s from an alternate-worlds story. You know about alternate worlds, right?”

I nodded.

“The Kerr time machine opens a portal to the past or the future. When the characters in the Kerr novel use it to change the past, they splinter off a new future,” said Auntie Shanti. “The world is different for the versions of the characters who exist in the new future. But their actions don’t affect the future that they themselves come from.”

“You mean their original present?” I asked.

“Exactly.”

I thought about it. I guess I looked confused because Jaya said, “Look at it this way. Suppose you used the Kerr machine to open a portal and travel back to 1930 and kill Hitler. Then in the world where you did that, World War II would never happen. But that wouldn’t affect the world you left from. If you went home in the Kerr time machine, your own world would be the same as ever—World War II would still have happened in that world.”

“I see,” I said. “So you couldn’t go back in time and change your own past even though you could change the past for other people in alternate universes. Including other versions of you.”

“Right,” said Auntie Shanti. “You would never experience the new past yourself.”

“So how does the Wells machine work? What rules does it follow?” I asked.

“As far as anyone knows, it’s unrestricted,” said Auntie Shanti. “H. G. Wells doesn’t say anything about not being able to change the past or bring back information from the future, or alternate universes, or anything like that.”

“Wells doesn’t even mention the grandfather paradox,” said Jaya. “I bet you could even use his machine to go back in time and kill your grandfather before he met your grandmother, and then you’d never be born. You would probably just disappear.”

“That sounds unbelievably dangerous,” I said. It was exactly what I’d been worrying about when the tiny time machine first appeared in my bedroom.

“All powerful objects are dangerous,” said Jaya. “I like to think things work out all right anyway.”

“Only if you’re careful,” I said.

“Don’t be a worrywart, Leo,” said Jaya.

“I’m not a worrywart. I’m sensibly cautious!” I finished my fish and chips and crumpled up the wrapper. “Here, want me to throw that away for you?”

“Thanks.” Jaya and her aunt handed me their wrappers. I walked over to a trash basket a few yards behind our bench.

• • •

When I came back, someone was talking to Jaya and her aunt. He had his back to me, but I recognized his stiff posture and reddish-blond hair. It was Simon FitzHenry!

“You came to tell me you forgive me, didn’t you?” he was saying.

“I’m just here visiting my aunt for the weekend,” Jaya said.

“But you do forgive me, don’t you? You’re not still angry?”

“Not angry, just disappointed. I thought you were a different kind of person.”

“I will be. I’ll be whatever kind of person you want me to be. You and me—we’re not like everyone else. We’ve always understood each other. Please, Jaya!” He sounded a little desperate. Jaya looked uncomfortable.

I went around the bench and stood next to her. Simon’s face contorted when he saw me. “Leo? What are you doing here?”

“He’s visiting my aunt with me,” said Jaya.

Simon stared at me murderously. Then he turned to Jaya. “I thought you came here to see me, but clearly I’m wrong. I can see I’m not wanted.” He turned on his heel and walked off.

“That was weird,” I said. “How did he know we were here?”

“Well, he does live in London,” said Jaya. “Maybe he was just walking in the park. Should I go after him? I feel bad for him. He really did sound sorry.”

“Do you forgive him?” asked Auntie Shanti.

“Sure, I guess. Now that Francis has the job.”

“Would you—you know—go out with Simon?” I asked. “Because that’s what he’ll think if you stop him.”

“No, I guess you’re right,” said Jaya. “Poor Simon, though.”

After Simon had disappeared over the crest of the hill, Auntie Shanti said, “Let’s talk about tomorrow. I have some questions about your plan.”

“Okay,” said Jaya.

“First off,” said Auntie Shanti, “why bother with the mini demo time machine? You could use that same technique to capture the full-size machine instead. After all, the full-size machine should be right there in the laboratory too, going forward into the future. It would be far more useful than the mini model.”

“But we already have the big machine in the repository—not that it works,” said Jaya. “How can it be in two places at once?”

“Of course it can be in two places at once,” said Auntie Shanti. “It’s a time machine. That’s what time machines do.”

“Oh, right. Duh,” said Jaya, hitting her head.

“I don’t want to wrestle the Time Traveller for the full-size machine, do you?” I said. “The Time Traveller is riding the full-size machine. He’s not going to just let us take it. The demo is empty. There’s nobody at the controls. All we need to do is stop time and grab it.”

“Good point,” said Auntie Shanti. “That brings up my second question. How do you plan to stop time?”

I had been worrying about that myself. But not too much—after all, I had seen my future self on the time machine. “I was hoping we’d think of something when we get there,” I said. It sounded pretty lame, but we were bound to come up with something that worked.

“Actually, I have a plan,” said Jaya.

“Great! Tell me!” I said.

“When we get there, I need you to almost kill me.”

“What?!!”

“Choke me or hold a knife to my throat or something. When people almost die, their life flashes in front of their eyes. That’s because time slows down and compresses. It should slow down enough for me to grab the mini time machine.”

“No way, Jaya! That’s the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard,” I said, horrified. “It won’t work.”

“Why not?” She sounded offended.

“Well, for one thing, there’s no way I’m going to choke you or hold a knife to your throat.”

“That’s not my plan not working. That’s you being too stubborn and wimpy to try it,” said Jaya.

“Not wanting to hurt you is not wimpy! But it wouldn’t work anyway. You know I would never hurt you! Your life only flashes in front of your eyes when you think you’re really going to die, not when you know someone is pretending to try to kill you.”

“All right, fine. I’ll use plan B, then.”

“What’s plan B?” I asked.

“I can’t tell you yet. Or else it might not work.”

“Oh, come on! That’s ridiculous. I’ve told you all my plans.”

“No, really. I can’t. It depends on the element of surprise,” said Jaya.

Nothing I said would change her mind.

• • •

I did win the fight about who got the guest bed. What with the hard floor, jet lag, excitement, and worry, I didn’t get much sleep.

The next day, the three of us headed out after breakfast to the Time Traveller’s house. Well, breakfast for me and Jaya—it was lunch for Auntie Shanti. It’s five hours later in London, so we’d had some trouble waking up.

Before we’d gone a block, it started to rain, little misty drops that stuck to Jaya’s hair like glitter. I turned up my collar and stuck my hands in my pockets.

The Time Traveller’s house was big and fancy, made of red brick with white trim. It had an octagonal turret and all sorts of peaks and dormers in the roof. The whole ground floor had been converted to shops: a chocolatier, a yarn shop, and a florist.

The Time Traveller must have made a good living, I thought. Maybe that would be a good career choice for me too: mad scientist in a work of fiction.

I stood on tiptoe and peered over the low garden wall. Behind the house were a glass greenhouse, a shed, and a little building that might have been a stable or carriage house.

“That was his lab, I bet,” said Jaya.

“We want what used to be the parlor,” said Jaya. “Which one do you think that is?”

“The chocolatier, I should think,” said Auntie Shanti. “With the bow window.”

“All right,” said Jaya. “Here’s the plan. I’ll stop time. Leo, right away—the instant it stops—you grab the time machine and switch it off. Pull the lever upright. Perfectly straight up and down. Make sure you get the lever that’s sending it into the future, not the one that would send it into the past!”

“I know,” I said. “I read the book too. And I saw myself using it, remember?”

“All right, just making sure you know what to do. Meanwhile, Auntie Shanti, you distract the shopkeeper and whoever else is in there. Buy some chocolate or something. Make a fuss. Can you do that?”

“Oh yes, I think I can manage,” said Auntie Shanti. “I’m rather good at buying chocolate.”

“We need a bag or something to put the time machine in,” I said. “It’s going to be pretty distinctive looking—it glitters. We don’t want people wondering what it is and where it came from.”

“Half a sec,” said Auntie Shanti, rooting in her purse. She pulled out a folded plastic shopping bag that said Fortnum & Mason. “Will that do?”

“Perfect. Thanks.”

“I’d better take that,” said Jaya. “Okay, here goes.” She opened the door. A bell tinkled as we stepped into a cool room smelling of chocolate.

• • •

There were plaster flowers on the ceiling. Shelves piled with fancy candy tins lined the walls. A long glass counter ran along one side with trays of chocolate laid out in rows, which made them look more like jewelry than something you’d eat. Aside from a saleswoman standing behind the counter, we were alone in the shop.

“May I help you?” asked the saleswoman.

“Yes, please,” said Auntie Shanti. “I need—oh, shall we say five hundred grams of chocolates? They’re for my sister. She’s quite particular. Have you got anything from Madagascar?”

“Yes, let me show you our single-estate bars,” said the saleswoman. “They’re very popular.”

“Oh, no, that won’t do,” said Auntie Shanti. “My sister loathes anything popular. What’s your worst seller?”

“I think you must mean our most exclusive collection,” said the saleswoman.

“Quite,” said Auntie Shanti.

“Perhaps your sister would enjoy our florals?” suggested the saleswoman.

“Nasturtium and borage—with chocolate? Really? I can see why they’re . . . exclusive,” said Auntie Shanti.

“Indeed. Would you care for a taste?” offered the saleswoman. Auntie Shanti wrinkled her nose but nodded.

Meanwhile, Jaya had been looking around the room. “The demo time machine should be near the fireplace,” she said.

I followed her across the room to a marble fireplace with long chocolate boxes stacked in it like logs. Jaya pointed to a spot by her feet. “In the book, Wells says the demo was sitting on a little octagonal table in front of the fire, ‘with two legs on the hearth rug.’ So that should be right here.”

“There’s no table there now, though. Do you think the demo would have fallen down? Or will it be standing in mid-air?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” said Jaya. “If it’s not on the floor, get ready to catch it.” She glanced around. Auntie Shanti and the saleswoman were deep in conversation, inspecting boxes of candy. “Remember, grab the lever the absolute second time stops,” said Jaya. “Don’t wait! We won’t have long.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” I said. “Hurry up and do whatever you’re going to do, before the saleswoman notices us.”

“Okay. Here goes.” Jaya took a deep breath.

Then she leaned forward and kissed me.