Timebound(49)

She shrugged and pulled her sweater closer around her shoulders. “Either way, I felt responsible. I knew I needed to call security, but I was fully dressed for 1853, with just my bag packed for travel, and I didn’t have a communicator on me—I couldn’t exactly take it on a jump to the 1850s, so I’d left it back in the locker with my other belongings. I walked down the hall to find another supervisor, but they had either stepped out or weren’t in the office yet. And then I saw Richard, coming out of wardrobe. He had on the most outrageous tie-dyed shirt and bell-bottoms that were nearly as wide as my skirt—and it was clear from his expression that he’d gotten my email. He was as devastated as I was when he saw Angelo.

“Richard said everyone was probably already in the jump room, which made sense. We usually gathered around the platform—a large circular area—for ten minutes or so before getting into place, chugging a last cup of decent coffee or whatever. Richard and I were actually late—we only had three or four minutes before the jump.”

“But the crew would cancel a jump in case of a murder, right?” I asked.

“Yes. But they never got the chance to cancel it. Richard and I told the jump coordinator—his name was Aaron—about Angelo. Richard also mentioned that he had seen Saul a little after eight, outside the building with a few of his friends from the Objectivist Club. Two of them were part of CHRONOS—a middle-aged historian who was scheduled to retire in a couple of years and one of the guys in the research section.”

She gave me a little smile. “But I’m getting sidetracked. At any rate, Aaron was calling in this information to security headquarters, which was two buildings over, and we were just about to tell the others, when Saul came into the room—although I don’t think anyone realized it was Saul at first. I know I didn’t. He was dressed in a burqa—you know, the Middle Eastern head-to-toe covering?”

I nodded.

Her face was pale as she continued. “He was holding our colleague, Shaila, right in front of him, with a knife to her neck. And there was something odd strapped to her chest—a small square box.

“Saul ordered Aaron to cut off the call to security and told everyone to get into their places for the jump. And, of course, we all did what he said—I mean, the others didn’t know about Angelo yet, but some crazy person in a burqa was holding a knife to Shaila.” She shuddered. “He was staring straight at me the entire time, Kate, with the same expression I’d seen in his eyes the night before, like he was wishing the knife was at my throat. Richard saw it, too, and I think that’s why he moved into my spot on the platform. I don’t know if Saul noticed we switched or not—he was in Shaila’s space, still keeping the knife to her neck.”

Katherine gave me a rueful smile. “And the burqa was a very smart choice on his part.”

“Because no one could see who he was?” I asked.

“Yes, it definitely kept him from being immediately identified, except for me and Richard, and we might not have recognized him if we weren’t already forewarned—just the eyes through that tiny space? But,” she said, “that’s not the only reason. With all of the rest of us, you could make an educated guess as to when we were headed. Maybe not where, at least not after the mid-1900s when fashions became more global, but you could generally tell the era within a few decades from the way we were dressed. The burqa, however—women have worn that in many countries for thousands of years. It was still worn in a few isolated communities in my era. Shaila studied changes in Islamic culture over time and I knew she’d made jumps that ranged from the mid-1800s to the mid-2100s. So who knows when or where Saul landed? He could have been fully dressed for any era under that wrap.

“And it all happened so fast,” she added. “When Aaron pushed the button to launch the jump, Saul shoved Shaila face-first into the center of the circle. She hit the platform and the very last thing I saw was a flash of white light and a loud whooshing sound, before I landed, hard, in the cabin just north of the field where they were holding the Woodstock festival. A hard landing is not normal—usually you just appear in the new location in whatever position you started. If you were scratching your nose in 2305, you’d still be scratching when you landed in 1853. But I landed flat on my back on the dirt floor, with my hoopskirt quite nearly inside out. The thing Saul strapped to Shaila’s chest must have been an explosive—and I can only assume it was a powerful one since no one, to my knowledge, has been able to connect to CHRONOS since.”