Jaclyn the Ripper (40 page)

“ 'Dusa, I—”

“You know, I had a copy of the special key.”

“No, I didn't.”

She managed a conspiratorial smile. Of course, she'd wanted to help him stop Jaclyn, but she had really come back to the time machine because she wanted to travel to 1906 and greet him when he and Amy arrived. She wanted him to be her shadow-lover as he was hers. She was sorry—oh, so sorry—that she hadn't been born in the nineteenth century. Yet she didn't want to be a home wrecker, either. She genuinely cared for Amy and was hoping that the three of them could've worked something out.

“You think?” she added. “Maybe?”

“Maybe,” he said sadly.

“No, you have Amy, and that's enough,” she repeated.

“You mustn't talk.”

“Come back to . . . to before this day.” She coughed again. “Come back to Monday night . . . and. . . .”

Her voice trailed off. Her face went slack and more blood came from her mouth.

“Hang on, 'Dusa, please hang on!”

He heard shouts from the wreckage of the courtyard and saw the EMTs through a gaping hole in the glass wall.

“In here!” he called back. “In here!”

He turned back to Amber and stopped, startled. She was staring up at him, a smile frozen on her face, yet she saw nothing.

She was gone.

 

While the EMTs tried to bring her back and failed, H.G. gazed across the exhibition of his life, now reduced to an enormous jumble of broken display cases and signs amid broken tile and hunks of walls, books scattered about, some splayed and torn. Tears streamed down his face—tears for his 'Dusa, who had been born in the wrong century. He wasn't good at grief. He tried to shake it off, but in this moment what else was there except her and the rubble of his life once lived?
Perhaps chaos. Yes.
And so he imagined chaos: His ideas had been set loose without logic or reason; now they hung in the air, shaped by the dust of a strange world; they had become meaningless, yet they existed. If he did make it home, if he was given the dubious gift of the twentieth century, those same ideas would eventually flower in his mind and once again become books.
And now some will have murder in them and the death of someone very dear to my heart, and ultimately they may make no difference at all.
Angry, he wound up and hurled the Beretta across the room. It hit an exposed steel beam and ricocheted to the floor.

 

And he had to find it again when a West Division task force showed up, and Sergeant Young was stunned to discover not merely the body of Amber Reeves, killed in the line of duty, but H.G. sitting idly with the corpse of the “Brentwood killer.” Filled with admiration for this detective from Scotland Yard, this expert on copycat killers, Young took the report himself, then thanked H.G. for meting out justice the old-fashioned way.

 

The “deus ex machina” had been a 7.2 on the Richter scale, its epicenter on a newly discovered fault line that spiderwebbed almost directly
under the Getty complex. Yet the buildings had been so well designed that they had not suffered major structural damage. Granted, glass walls, ceilings, cracked travertine and the like had to be replaced, but the experts were saying any other complex would've been flattened. The Getty was a miracle. H.G. concurred. For him, it was a shining example of what the future could be like should mankind somehow rise above fear, entitlement, envy and a bent for self-destruction.

Unlike the 405. The freeway had split in two places—just below Getty Center Drive and farther north at Mulholland, great broken chunks of reinforced concrete accordioned against each other, abandoned vehicles askew on the dead highway. Looking down from the Getty a day later, one could see cars still circling the damage like ants trying to find a way home. Estimated commute time from the San Fernando Valley to the Westside was six hours and counting.

The next morning, H.G. went to Venice and got new credentials from Xerox. That afternoon—looking very British in a light-gray suit and blue tie—he became a special adjuster from Lloyd's of London, on site to assess damage to the “H. G. Wells—A Man Before His Time” exhibition and oversee its transport back to the UK, where it would be repaired and reassembled, then shipped off to São Paulo, the next stop on its world tour. Assuming that the Getty employees could gather up the relics of his life on their own, he closed off the center gallery, donned overalls and set about repairing his beloved machine. It took four days.

Except on that first day, he discovered the nail that 'Dusa had put through the hole in the central gearing wheel. Astonished, he realized that Jaclyn hadn't wrecked his machine at all. Rather, Ms. Reeves had saved him from a trip to hell. He gazed at the nail, then put it in his pocket and vowed to keep it. That simple, functional, inanimate object had become a talisman of his desire and salvation.
I must give it a special place for remembrance' sake.
He smiled as it came to him.
Ah, yes. I'll use it as a bookmark, and if I think of 'Dusa when I close a book on it, I can always consider the folly of returning to the twenty-first century, can't I? Or the wonder of her.

No one questioned H.G. as they crossed the rotunda—he was a familiar face at the Getty these days, yet the guards did grin and admire Amy, wondering how H.G. could be so lucky. He grinned back at them, then took Amy on a tour, since they weren't likely to ever see the museum again. The night was balmy, so they started in the garden, and Amy was thrilled with the exotic plants and flowers, the meandering stream, its timeless sound of water, the exquisite nature of it all.
Circles
, she whispered passionately,
this marvelous place lives in circles.

As the garden went, so they flowed to its heart, holding hands, and in the moonlight, H.G. read Irwin's words carved in stone before the reflecting pool. He smiled in agreement, for they echoed his knowledge of the cosmos and the fourth dimension: “Always changing, never twice the same.”

He gazed at the pool, its floating azaleas dark in the night, the water—where it was still—even darker. He imagined himself a transcendent child on the shores of his mythical Sea of Tranquility, a man-child who has written books, lived and entertained well, who has said his piece to presidents and prime ministers, and, yes, who had time-traveled and done battle with Fate.
Perhaps she has won
, he thought,
for she has left
me with the terrible knowledge of the end. Novelist, critic, philosopher, friend, lover, husband and father—I am all those and will remain so, yet I must do more. I must become a prophet. I must warn mankind to fear the dark side of their science and technology; I must write, write and write that into their collective unconscious; I must urge humanity to renounce nationalism and religion in favor of a civilized world-state that worships good works and noble deeds. I must do more than I have done.

He picked up a small stone.

If I am successful, I may be able to change history—my own works and deeds like one small pebble tossed in the Sea of Tranquility creating ripples that become tidal waves of enlightenment when they crash upon Philistine shores somewhere along the great curve of the fourth dimension.

With that, he tossed the pebble in the pool. It plunked down in the middle and sent ripples that broke gently against the sides and caressed the azaleas.

He smiled.

 

H.G. deftly removed the bicycle lock from the central gearing system, thought of 'Dusa's nail in his pocket and allowed himself a private smile. Then he closed the small door to the RRL housing, crawled out of the engine compartment, locked the hatch. In the cabin, he placed the lock behind the chair so it wouldn't disintegrate.

“When to?” he asked Amy.

She smiled. “It would be nice to get back in time for tea.”

“Yes, of course.”

On the Destination Indicator, he entered: year, 1906; month, June; day, 24; time, half three
P.M
.

With a flourish, he turned the key and engaged the switches on the control panel. As the engine whined up to speed, he sat back in the chair, pulled Amy onto his lap, strapped them in. She giggled.

“Cozy.”

“You know, we could go to Sunday morning,” he suggested. “Regent's Park will be lovely.” He closed his eyes, remembered them as lovers, then that night at the Four Seasons. “A boat on the lake. . . . Maybe drinks at
the Inn. . . . Or come back to the flat and have sherry in front of the fire. . . .”

“A week from Sunday,” she whispered and kissed him. “Catherine says she'd rather go a week from Sunday.”

“Ah.” He smiled. “To tea, then?”

“Yes.”

“Would you do the honors?”

“Gladly.”

She shoved the Accelerator Helm Lever forward until it locked in the flank position.

Karl Alexander is the author of five novels, including
Papa and Fidel
, a novel of Hemingway, Castro and Cuba. His novel
Time After Time
(which shortly will have a new edition) was made into the classic Warner Bros. film and, more recently, a musical play. Alexander served in the Vietnam War as a Marine Corps officer, received an M.F.A. from the Writers' Workshop at The University of Iowa. He has worked as a university professor and as a screenwriter and lighting director in film and television. He lives in California with his wife, Kateri, and is working on a new novel. Please visit his Web site:
www.karlalexander.net
.