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“READY?”
I jumped. The voice—Valcas’ voice—had come from somewhere behind me.
I spun around in my chair. “How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“I didn’t see you come in. Did you travel to the space right behind me?”
Valcas grinned.
“Well, did you?”
“No, but I suppose I could have. You were absorbed in your own thoughts again, lost in that faraway place where you transport yourself while thinking. You do that a lot. It’s not difficult to catch you by surprise.”
I shrugged. “I suppose not.” My response was nearly a sigh. I wasn’t sure whether I was annoyed with him or just tired. “At least I won’t have to worry about the impact of your arrival,” I said.
Valcas nodded, motioning for me to follow him out of the conference room. “I’m impressed by how much you’ve learned already.”
I gave Valcas a well-deserved eye roll. “It’s not like I had much of a choice. Like I told Commissioner Reese, I’ve had a crash course in all of this stuff since meeting you.”
Valcas’ jaw tightened.
“I get it,” I said. “I’m not mad at you anymore. Your people skills could use some work, though. You’re worse than I am.”
At that, Valcas tilted his head back and laughed. “I can’t disagree with that. Let’s get out of here. I want to show you something I think you might find more interesting than charts and data.”
We walked out of the conference room and through a tunnel with a long ramp that led back outside. I squinted at the violet-blue sky. It was bright outside even though, as Ivory had said, there was no sunlight in Aboreal. “This place is kind of weird. Do you come here often to visit your mother’s side of the family?”
“Not unless it’s absolutely necessary.” Valcas shrugged. “I don’t agree with most of the customs here. My mother checks in from time to time to deal with the upkeep of her family’s estate.”
“What about your father?”
“What about him?”
I frowned. I wasn’t sure whether Valcas’ father, Jim Hall, was still alive. I imagined he’d be nearly as old as Edgar. “Never mind,” I said. “It’s really none of my business.”
Valcas didn’t say anything else on that topic, so I let it go.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“How much did Edgar tell you about slicing?”
“Huh? What’s slicing?”
Valcas chuckled. “Okay. What did you learn from Edgar while hiding out at his Nowhere?”
I wrinkled my nose and looked away. “Edgar taught me about friendship.” Frowning, I added, “I never met anyone like him before. He was so accepting and grateful for my company.” My voice broke. “I wish he were still alive. I miss him.”
Valcas cleared his throat. His arms twitched toward me, and then fell back again at his sides. His actions gave me the strangest feeling—that he wanted to comfort me, but that he either didn’t know how to execute such a basic human kindness, or was afraid of how I would react to his touch. He hadn’t hesitated to comfort Mom after my TSTA hearing, so I knew he was somewhat capable. I felt a twinge in my stomach. My brain told me that I didn’t want him to touch me, but...
I shook my head and sniffed. “Edgar lectured me on the physics behind time travel. Most of that went over my head. I suppose I could have paid better attention, but I was more interested in how the travel glasses worked so I could figure out how to escape—”
“To escape?”
I blushed.
“Oh, right.” Valcas frowned. “Me. You wanted to escape me. Look—” His hand grazed his glasses and then stopped. He dropped his hand and shook his head. “I’m sorry about that. But we need to get past it if we want to continue with our mission. I don’t know if I’ll ever make up for what I’ve done. Please realize that it was in your best interest... and Plaka’s.”
“I’m trying, but how else am I supposed to discuss the subject of time travel when most of my worst experiences traveling involved you?” I hugged my arms tightly around my ribs. Most of my best experiences traveling had involved him too. “Anyway, Edgar also told me basic information about how to use the travel glasses—info that I’d already learned from you about how to search and travel.” I felt a slight smile reach my lips. “We spent an entire afternoon on the Blanching Effect.”
“Seriously?”
“Yup.”
Valcas chuckled. “Good old Doctor Porter’s discoveries about the bright white light?”
“Yeah, not to mention his son Porter Jr., and Porters the Third and Fourth.”
“That sounds like quite a long afternoon. What else did you learn?”
“Edgar didn’t know that the travel glasses could be used to communicate like a telephone. He discovered that while I was there.” I glared at Valcas, remembering when he first spoke to me through the travel glasses, against an all-white backdrop after he’d been shackled and bound.
Valcas nodded. His face gave away no indication that his first contact with me through the glasses as a communication device had been out of the ordinary. “I added that feature to the pair he made.”
“You did?”
The smugness on his face answered my question. I was starting to get good at reading his expressions even though his dark glasses constantly covered his eyes.
“But, how?”
“Inventiveness runs in my family and I had a good teacher.”
“You mean Enta?”
Valcas nodded.
I remembered that Enta had also added a communication feature to the pairs of travel glasses she’d created. She’d also informed me that, like the zobascope, the travel glasses were able to record.
“Enta gave me the zobascope that Edgar had given her for her birthday,” I admitted.
Valcas raised his eyebrows. I thought I saw a slight pink tinge reach his cheeks. My eyes popped open. Was he embarrassed?
The zobascope was a tiny telescope that Edgar had invented to capture moving images. Rotating the zobascope to the right recorded a scene, and turning the lens to the left played the images back. After Edgar died, Enta had given the zobascope to me, presumably so I could view what was recorded inside: recordings of a past-Valcas and a conversation between Valcas’ parents and Edgar regarding Edgar’s invention of the travel glasses. I remembered the recording I watched where Valcas confirmed that his holographic girlfriend, Juna, was not real. She’d been nothing but a character in a book that his parents had gifted him—one of many volumes in the holo-brary.
“Enta knew that Edgar had surpassed her with his invention of the travel glasses,” I continued. “From what I understand, Edgar’s travel glasses, unlike the pairs Enta made, had the ability to record. She told me that the zobascope was the predecessor to Edgar’s travel glasses.”
Valcas reddened again and nodded. I bit my lip, recalling Valcas’ confrontation with Juna that I’d seen through the zobascope. Was something as silly as that enough to embarrass Valcas? I cringed, knowing how much someone else seeing something like that would embarrass me. I instantly softened toward him.
“Everything else I learned about traveling, I learned from you—the past version of you that I found at the White Tower.” Now it was my turn to blush. As proud as I was that I could stand up to Valcas and admit all of these things, I couldn’t help feeling embarrassed about how close I’d gotten to his past self—the green-eyed version of him that I’d used to get more information about Valcas’ past, the one deserving of compassion and love.
“From me,” he said, his voice breaking slightly. Something about the way he spoke those words made me feel like he was able to read more into the situation than I’d told him.
But what could he possibly know about the time I spent at the White Tower pretending I was green-eyed Valcas’ betrothed? Did he have any idea how his past self would have acted and felt toward me? Was he even the same person? Unable to handle any more awkwardness along those lines, I redirected the conversation back to Valcas’ earlier question.
“What is slicing?” I asked. “Does that have anything to do with the travel glasses’ ability to record, communicate, search or travel?”
“All of those abilities and more,” Valcas said.