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October 23rd, 1915 Midtown Manhattan
MATT directed his bags to the hotel, then left Penn Station cross and exhausted from the trip across the continent. It wasn’t the train—the views, the berth, and even the food had been first class. It was worry about Page that had left its mark. He’d set off after her across the country, but various delays had made him late—she had already been in New York at least a week. If she were still here.
Exiting onto Thirty-second Street, he surveyed the crowds, looking for Page even though he had no expectation he might happen to run into her, not in the middle of Manhattan—but he had to hope she’d be here somewhere, so he kept his eyes open.
The real reason he was upset, of course, was the confounded watch—or rather how he was having to learn how it worked the hard way.
Two weeks after his arrival in nineteen hundred twelve, Matt had kept his eye on the temporal tuner and seen that Page had Traveled three years into the future, landing at nine thirty on September twenty-fourth in nineteen fifteen, and in San Francisco. He had even written down the latitude and longitude of the location, which placed her in or around Golden Gate Park. According to the watch.
Trying to Travel to that point in space and time would’ve been too risky using the professor’s faulty device. But Matt had presumed all he had to do was wait three years, then show up in the general area at the time she’d be arriving and use the regular tracking function to find her. A few weeks later he’d happened to check the temporal tuner and seen that by the middle of October, nineteen fifteen, Page would be in New York City.
Matt reflected on this puzzle while walking east toward Broadway, a part of his brain still searching for Page among the throngs. At the time, he had assumed he would reunite with her in nineteen fifteen in San Francisco—that they would travel together to New York. It hadn’t worked out that way.
He was glad that he had quit checking the temporal tuner, worried that having known where Page would be in the future had somehow fixed the fact of it in reality, like collapsing a quantum wave—a mistake he wouldn’t want to repeat.
Those three years waiting in San Francisco had given Matt plenty of opportunity to study the watch itself and its programming. He’d also had the time to review all he knew about time-travel theory. But it was in practice that the rubber met the road, and when Matt had gone to Golden Gate Park the morning of September twenty-fourth, then tried tracking Page with the locator app, she hadn’t appeared. After nine thirty, when he knew she must have arrived there somewhere, he hadn’t seen any blip or bar to guide him. So he’d resorted to running through the park looking for her. He had searched for hours before giving up. Then he’d gone to the bank.
Matt still ground his teeth when he recalled that conversation with Mr. Pitt. Yes, Miss Page had visited the bank that morning, but the lady had left already. No, Mr. Pitt didn’t know where he could find her, but he believed she was still in the city. He had given her Matt’s message, but, no, she had not waited or left any note for him.
Frustrated with the banker’s attitude and Page’s not having waited for him, or at least left a message saying where she could be found, Matt had searched through shops all over town, as well as clubs, hotels, and restaurants. And all to no avail. So after a couple of weeks scouring the city in vain, and knowing that Page would soon wind up in New York City, he had taken the train across the continent. But if she was still here somewhere, how would he be able to find her when he hadn’t been able to in California?
Without the watch able to provide even a direction, he had little hope of finding Page amongst the masses. But he knew he’d be searching for her anyway. His best hope was that the manager at the main branch here would be more helpful than Mr. Pitt in San Francisco. Surely Page would need to withdraw some cash while she was in New York City. She may have already. Unfortunately, Matt had arrived on a Saturday and would now have to wait until Monday to find out.
At the intersection with Broadway, Matt divided his mind between crossing safely and continuing to look for Page. He knew he’d recognize her, even at a distance, if once he saw her. He looked at faces in the crowd and the backs of heads and silhouettes seen through shop windows as he walked on toward Fifth Avenue. He also hoped that if he could just see her, even from far away, it would short out the time differential between them.
Otherwise, if he searched and searched and still couldn’t find her, he’d have to risk Traveling. He’d stopped checking the temporal tuner out of concern that seeing where she would be in his relative future might somehow keep them separated. If he looked at it again, it would be to find the right coordinates to set for Traveling. But if he did that, where in time and space might he actually end up? Even attempting to go just a couple weeks into the future might only take him further from Page.
Until he’d discovered what went wrong with the initial test trip with the master Travel device, trying again would be an act of desperation.
With his mental functions occupied on multiple levels, it took Matt a while to realize he had stopped behind a large crowd waiting at the Fifth Avenue intersection, and never moved on. He looked up and down the street and saw he was stuck at the back of a solid mass of people standing six to twelve deep on both sides. As far as the eye could see. It’s too early for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. That tradition probably hadn’t even started yet.
Whatever parade might be coming, Matt wasn’t going to be crossing Fifth Avenue anytime soon. He should probably start searching the shops. What he did, though, was use his height to scan the crowd on either side of the street. Passing over the policemen in their uniforms holding back the throngs, he tried to pick out the redheads among the watchers lining the sidewalks.
He could swiftly dismiss them all one by one because Page always wore the same hairstyle. He had asked her about that, and she’d explained that she’d found the cut that looked best on her, so she wasn’t about to change it. He’d teased her, telling her that too much variety with her clothes had overwhelmed her senses. But he’d had to admit she never looked anything but gorgeous.
Eventually he’d need to check in at the hotel, so he started working his way slowly along the back of the crowds, continuing to hunt for Page as he went. As he did, he met the head of the parade advancing from the opposite direction. Women marching with a banner proclaiming the need for the right to vote—seeing that, Matt was glad for the heavy police presence. In addition to the men who were standing out in front of the crowd, a number of mounted officers patrolled between them and the marchers.
He considered going into some of the stores as he passed by, but the staff were probably all watching the parade. Once he’d refreshed himself at the hotel, he could go out again, searching. By then the parade should be over.
Swiveling his head from side to side, he spotted four women carrying a stretcher loaded with ballot boxes and wondered which shops would be the best prospects for finding Page. She did tend to make an impression, so if he described her, the saleswomen should remember. The question was whether Page had made purchases or not—and left an address for deliveries if she had. And if so, whether or not Matt could get that information. The odds were slim he’d run into Page herself, whichever shop he happened to try.
He doubted Macy’s was upscale enough for her. Bergdorf Goodman? He was waffling over whether to try there first when something in the back of his brain alerted him to something he’d noticed but not paid attention to, the mood of the men around him. He had wandered behind a large group of laborers—men who had clearly been drinking heavily already, despite the early hour.
From their grumbling, they weren’t supporters. Roughly dressed and unwashed, the beer fumes exuded from their clothes as well as their breath. And they sounded aggressive and eager to begin making trouble.
“Look at that one, bold as brass and the hair to match with her nose in the air.”
Matt’s mind picked that one comment out from the mix and his eyes flew over the crowd to the people marching. And like iron filings drawn to a powerful magnet, they locked on Page. Wearing a modern hat and a fashionable outfit of the time—a long, bright green dress with a short tan tunic—she stood out from her fellow suffragettes, all wearing white.
She was walking with the California contingent. Which made sense—she must have hooked up with some activists in San Francisco, then accompanied them here. Rather than wait for him.
As she drew closer, Page must have sensed him there, because she suddenly turned her head to look directly at where he was standing. Glad for his long legs putting his head above the throng, Matt waved at her. And grinned like a maniac.
One of the men around him turned and glared. “Hey, pal. You friends with one of these broads?”
The tone was hostile, and Matt glanced around to see how close the nearest policeman was while he replied. “Those are ladies you’re talking about, and yes. One of them is a friend of mine.”
The belligerent man pushed against him. “Well your friend ain’t no lady if she wants the vote.”
Some of his friends had turned around to back him up, and one added in an aggrieved tone, “They’ll turn the whole country dry if we let ‘em.”
The first man nodded while keeping his glare on Matt. “But we won’t let ‘em, will we?”
Seeing the way these men were behaving, Matt could understand why a lot of people had believed Prohibition would be a good idea. It didn’t work out that well in the end, but clearly it had been tried for a reason. A good reason.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out Page waving at him, but he could not see the expression on her face. Hopefully it was joy at his having found her, even if it was by accident. He imagined her crystal blue eyes lighting up.
Angry lout number one then shoved his fist into Matt’s shoulder, pushing that side of him backward as he pivoted on an axis. Figuring it would be much better to draw these troublemakers toward himself and away from the marchers, he shifted his feet and lifted his knee as the man shoved. Angry lout number one dropped to the ground, moaning in pain.
Even in the crush of the crowd, this hadn’t gone unnoticed by the man’s irate compatriots. A highly inebriated fellow raised his fist, presumably prelude to trying to hit Matt—which didn’t go unnoticed by a nearby policeman, who blew his whistle. But everything was already escalating out of control at that point.
Matt shifted his feet and raised his hands to deflect the assailant’s fist and send it crashing into another would-be attacker’s face. As he dodged out of the way of a third man, he saw Page running toward him. But she wouldn’t be able to reach him between the now rioting crowd and the policemen who were converging on the scene to quell the mob. Matt was amused to find himself right in the middle of it all.
One of those angry louts grabbed him, and Matt barely avoided a headbutt—then he saw the look of horror on Page’s face, over the few dozen people between them. But her expression changed to a smile as she pulled something out of her purse. Her Travel device. And Matt realized she was going to try to rescue him, and how.
As he slipped past a flying fist and dropped another assailant, it hit him why what she was going to try might not work—what the potential result could be. He tried to shout to her over the increasing din. “No, Page. Wait!”
He caught the flash of doubt in her face just before she pushed a button on the watch and vanished right in front of everyone. Not that anyone noticed. Then someone’s fist connected with his jaw, sending him reeling backwards. Someone else knocked into him from behind, and he was sailing right back into the fray, sliding past another incoming punch—and driving his own fist up through that one’s jaw. Matt stepped behind the man, lifting with his hip to send him careening to the ground. I’ve lost her again.
He needed to get out of this mess and away, so he could think what he’d do next. She had probably Traveled another three years into the future. But he couldn’t be sure. And if he checked to see—
Hands grabbed at him from both sides. He saw police diving into the melee and laying about themselves with their truncheons. As they were hauling him away, one of the policemen holding him cuffed his hands in front of him—then he and his attackers were being dragged off to the boos and hisses of the crowd. The police stuffed all of the combatants into a waiting paddy wagon. Including Matt, of course.
Given their state of inebriation and general ragged condition, he wouldn’t have been worried about sharing the back of the truck with his attackers even if a couple of cops hadn’t climbed in with them. He was worried about Page. Whenever or wherever she had Traveled to, she might be in trouble. And Matt was not going to wait around for three more years—not when he’d gotten so close to her. Maybe it had been enough to short out the time differential so the locator app could track her again. He’d have to take the risk regardless.
The vehicle lurched off down the street, and he had to steady himself against the drunk beside him—then Matt kept glancing out a little window in the door to see where they were going. He would have to wait for the right timing.
Casually he lifted the cuff of his shirtsleeve and flipped the screen of his watch over to the temporal tuner. Page had Traveled three years into the future exactly, arriving at the same latitude and longitude she had left from. Matt flipped over to the Traveling app and set the watch for that same three years forward. Now he was prepared to leave. But he had to Travel soon, while he’d still land physically close to where Page had arrived. Assuming that the professor’s device would work the way Matt had surmised it should. He only needed to wait for a calm mind—and a lack of bumps in the road. All he needed was to hit the wrong button by mistake and land himself in the Middle Ages.
He saw they were traveling down Thirty-fourth Street, and when the paddy wagon stopped behind a line of other vehicles at the busy Broadway intersection, Matt prepared to push the right buttons. Facing his fellow prisoners, he grinned at them. “I take it you guys have heard of Harry Houdini, right?”
Then he Traveled away, leaving who knew what confusion in his wake.