Timebound(57)

“The Expo was in 1893, right?” I picked up the Log of Stable Points and began scrolling backward, beginning with the last entries on the list. “I really think it’s going to be one of those dates. After all, it was the 1890s diary that was stolen on the Metro.”

I started with Boston, however, since those jumps were the last two that they had taken together. There were seventeen stable point locations listed in the Boston area, but Katherine said that she and Saul had only used the one a few blocks from Faneuil Hall on their trips. The location, like many others, was a narrow alley. I pulled up the stable point and set the time for one minute prior to Katherine’s scheduled arrival: 04181873_06:47—April 18th, 1873, at 6:47 A.M.

A large rat ran into view after a few minutes, which kind of creeped me out, and I nearly lost focus. A few seconds later, however, a man appeared—so close that I could have counted individual threads in the weave of his black coat. As he moved away, and his face came partially into view, it was clear that this was Saul Rand—above-average height, with dark brown hair, pale skin, and the same intense expression I had seen in the two images in Katherine’s diaries. His beard was trimmed closely with no mustache, and my first impression was that my grandfather had been a slightly shorter, more handsome, but not very pleasant Abraham Lincoln, although that impression was at least partly due to the tall, black stovepipe hat on his head. Katherine was not with him.

Saul turned abruptly in my direction and I drew in a sharp breath as his eyes, narrowed and piercing, stared almost directly into mine, as though he knew I was watching him. I finally exhaled when I realized that he was just scanning the alleyway to make sure he’d arrived unobserved.

I tried the next-to-last jump and drew a total blank. The jump was either rescheduled or Saul skipped it, because although I waited several minutes, no one showed up, not even my good friend, the rat.

Since Katherine hadn’t appeared at either of the Boston jumps, I crossed that city from the list and focused on Chicago. There were four stable point locations listed within the fairgrounds, and the one used for most of the jumps was labeled as the Wooded Island—a secluded, shady area, with floral vines and lush foliage. I could see a cabin of some sort about twenty yards away, with large animal horns scattered about the exterior and a few park benches along the pathway. No one appeared on the first date I tried, although I observed, through the cover of the leaves surrounding my vantage point, a few people strolling along the sidewalk in the morning light.

On the next attempt, however, I hit pay dirt. About fifteen seconds into the surveillance, my view was suddenly obstructed by two figures. As they moved away from the stable point, I could see that one of them was Katherine. I immediately felt two strong, conflicting emotions—relief that we’d found the correct time and dismay that I would soon have to dress in something like the ornate period costume that she was wearing.

The tall man from the 1873 jump was next to her. His beard was gone, replaced by a long handlebar mustache. He gave the surroundings another quick scan, as he had done on the Boston jump, and then grabbed Katherine’s elbow to help her up the slight incline to the walkway. She held up the skirt of her gray dress. It was trimmed in dark purple and the outfit was topped off by a small hat with a ridiculously large lavender feather. As the two of them walked past the wooden cabin, a dark-haired boy of about eight or nine emerged from inside, a broom in his hand, and began to sweep away the leaves that had accumulated on the walkway.

I pulled my gaze sharply to the left to turn off the log display. The abrupt visual change from an autumn morning in the park to the interior scene of the library, where Connor was hunched over a computer and Katherine was replacing books on a shelf, was a bit disconcerting.

I carried the list over and put it on the table beside Connor, tapping the target date with my fingernail. “Found it. Chicago. A jump from April 3rd, 2305, to October 28th, 1893. Looks like it was the only jump to that date.”

Connor nodded at first, and then shook his head, pointing to an entry near the top of the log with one of the pretzel rods he was munching. “Yeah, the only jump specifically to the 28th—but look, here’s a two-day solo trip, October 27th to 29th, from February 2305.”

“Great,” I replied, rolling my eyes as I sank down into Katherine’s desk chair. “So there will be two Katherines strolling around the fair to confuse me.”

“Don’t know what you’re complaining about,” he said, taking another bite of pretzel. “At least you’ll get out of the house for a while.”