The Time Baroness (The Time Mistress Series) (23 page)

“Are you involved with him, if you do not mind my asking?”

“Um, yes, well, kind of. I mean, yes, I am.”

“Cassandra!” he said teasingly, “One of the first rules of time travel—”

“I know, I know, it is just that he might panic if he thinks I am missing.”

“I knew something was going on between you two.”

“We can talk about that another time. Let us deal with this right now.”

“All right, here,” he said handing her some note paper and a quill, “write him a note. Say you are too sick to see him or something, and I will drop it by your hotel and leave it with the front desk. You can make something up to explain later.”

“Perfect! I already mentioned this morning that I did not feel well.” Cassandra wrote the note out, then she and Nick walked to Covent Garden to the location of the portal exit. It was almost dark. A few beggars were still loitering about at the back of the alley. The pungent smells of London wafted through the air.

“I will cause a distraction, and you go,” he said. “Let us decide to meet back here at seven AM. In other words, I will be here to make sure the coast is clear, and you have got thirteen hours to get anything you think will be helpful. But remember: Do not bring anything that cannot be easily concealed. All we need is to be caught with another inexplicable object. Also, do not bring anyone back with you. It is too risky to involve anyone else, and there is not time to prepare them. Ready?”

“Yes,” she said steadily.

“All right, then.” He stalked boldly into the alleyway. “You there!” he called to the vagrants. They were startled. “Clear out, now, be gone, private property, come on, move along!” He was so forceful that the beggars immediately scurried out of the alley, grumbling as they went. Cassandra ran to the back of the alley, and after a moment, disappeared.

Jake was on duty to monitor the other end of the portal. He had just finished a meal of fish and chips and had begun to doze off. Suddenly, lights flashed and alarms sounded, alerting him that there was an exact match to Cassandra’s proportions.

He roused himself at once. “Hey!” he yelled to the other team members lounging around at the front of the lab. “It’s Cassandra!”

He activated the travel mode, and in seconds the pod was humming. Her form appeared one minute later. As the opaque door slid open, they all ran to help her out.

“Quiet, quiet!” yelled Jake. “Someone transmit to Professor Carver! Cassandra, my God, what’s happened? Are you all right?”

“James…” she stammered.

“Where’s James? Is he okay?”

“He has been arrested!” she managed to blurt out.

“Oh, no!” responded Jake. “Come on, come sit down. Do you need something to eat? Someone get her some water!”

Jake led her over to a sofa and sat her down, while handing her the glass.

“Listen, I am in a hurry. I have a lot to tell you and we have a lot to do, and we have until exactly seven tomorrow morning.”

Jake glanced at his watch. It was just past six in the evening. “Okay, go. We’ll get to work, and when Professor Carver gets here, we’ll fill him in so he can see if we missed anything.”

Cassandra laid out the situation fully. Though everyone was shocked that James had brought the music player, no one was surprised he had used it to impress a woman. There was amazement all around that a time traveler was already living in the nineteenth century, and Cassandra briefly related Nick’s background as far as she knew it. She explained to them that she and Nick planned to break James out of prison and that they also had to think of a way to dispose of the music player.

“The prison is divided into class sections, and the guards of the section for the upper class are more lax than the others,” Cassandra continued. “We just have to get to him, get him out and back to the portal exit before being caught. Nick is coming back with him, by the way.”

“He is? For good?” asked Jake.

“So he says.”

“What about you?”

Cassandra hesitated, “I do not know. I do not think so, I mean, I want to finish my year out and I have some loose ends. But let us not worry about that now. I shall figure it out. We need to think about what else might be useful in getting James out of the prison undetected, but we also need to focus on eliminating the device.”

The scientists put their heads together to confer, and decided that they first needed to see the layout of the prison. Jake spoke his request into his console, and in a moment the team was able to gather around a miniature hologram of Millbank. It was six stories high and resembled a wagon wheel. There was a guard post in the middle of a central courtyard, surrounded by a pentagon-shaped building. Attached to the center pentagon by corridors were six other pentagons, each with its own courtyard and center guard post. A twelve-foot wall surrounded the entire structure.

His cell should be approximately here,” said Cassandra, pointing to a window on the second story of the back left pentagon. “He is definitely on an outer wall, here at the back. It is the area of lowest security.”

“This thing is impressive,” said Jake looking at the model with awe. “You’re going to have to determine exactly which window it is from the outside.”

“Right,” she said, “I can figure that out the next time I go visit him.”

“Okay then, you’re going to need a ladder.”

“A nanofiber ladder would be best,” Cassandra stated. “At least fifteen feet long. Inactivated, it will be tiny and easy to carry. It will just look like a ball of yarn.”

“I’ll put in a transmit,” said Suhan, a small, slim female scientist of Turkish descent.

Cassandra went on. “Nick mentioned that we would need a laser saw, and another thing that would be helpful is lightweight black clothing, including night vision hoods.”

Jake shook his head. “You’re going back with a lot of gadgets. What’ll you do if you get caught?”

Cassandra looked up at him. “If we are well prepared, we will not get caught.”

“You have a point. Someone get a hold of Shannon and have her start whipping up the black period clothing and tell her to get the fabric for the hoods as well.” He turned to a young team member named Simon. “Do you know anything about that molecular dissolution compound that the World Space Organization was working on a few years ago?”

“Not a lot,” Simon replied, “but I’ll find out.” He pushed his curly, white-blond hair out of the way and activated the button resting in his ear with a turn of his wrist.

“I was thinking,” Jake continued, returning his attention to Cassandra, “that if you had some of that compound, you could use it to simply
evaporate
things, like the saw and the ladder in case you’re apprehended. I don’t know exactly how the stuff works, or even how to use it, so that it doesn’t dissolve everything it comes in contact with. We’ll need to find out.”

“About the saw,” said Suhan, wandering over from the corner where she’d been talking on her transmit. “I was thinking. Rather than slicing the bars, which would freak people out once they saw the results of the laser saw, how about using a V-FOG?” Her intelligent black eyes flashed.

“A what?” said Cassandra.

A Variable Frequency Oscillation Generator. It’s what was used several years back to dislocate telephone poles from their bases easily, when so many countries were getting rid of them. I spent time overseeing some of those construction projects.”

“But I don’t understand—”

“You can attach it to the glass of the prison window and it will shatter it within seconds. Then, you can attach it to the bars and it will shake them loose from the cement. When the authorities discover the breakout, they will puzzle that the bars could be pulled loose, but it will seem more explainable than if they’ve been cut cleanly and perfectly. No device that existed back then could do that.”

“Excellent idea,” said Jake. “How big are they?”

“Oh, they vary in size according to need. You could get a very small one for this. It just looks like a black box to the untrained eye.”

“Can you try to drum one up?” he asked.

“On it.” She quickly pulled her long, black hair back into a ponytail with a band from around her wrist and activated her transmit again.

At that moment Professor Carver strode in with a calm that belied the desperate situation. He had been filled in via transmit.

“Cassie, my dear!” he called out as he entered the lab. His considerable height gave him a commanding presence. She stood and moved toward him, taking in the comforting warmth of his brown eyes, his milk chocolate skin subtly creased with age, the gray of the close cut hair around his temples. He clasped her hands and held her at arm’s length. “Look at you!” he cried, “you look like you just stepped out of a nineteenth century painting. Living in the past seems to agree with you.”

She smiled warmly and hugged him. “Oh, Elton, it is so good to see you.” Tears formed in her eyes.

“Now, now, we’ll figure this out. That’s what we do.” He glanced appreciatively at the image of Millbank prison hovering over the coffee table in the lab’s lounge area. “Simon’s been in communication with me moment to moment with breakdowns on your progress, and it all sounds good so far. I’m going to start working on getting rid of the device. All right,” he said removing his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. “I need the exact mineral and chemical components of that music player. It must be the precise make and model that James possesses.”

One of the scientists leapt to a computer station and within seconds, the information the professor requested was hovering in the air for him to examine. “Great, I’ll work on this. You all go back to figuring out how to get that boy out of prison.”

Cassandra exhaled, feeling like she had been holding her breath for days. She realized that she was starting to feel that she had some control over the situation. After two hours, the team of scientists had rounded up the V-FOG and the ladder. Shannon had arrived and was furiously working on the clothes, with the proportions she had on file of Cassandra and James, and approximating those of Nick, based on Cassandra’s description of him.

The other scientists were dispersed about, transmitting and discussing other possibilities. Cassandra was still gazing at the virtual reality prison, catching snatches of conversation from the others, her own ideas percolating. She got up from the lounge sofa and approached Jake where he sat at the computer with Professor Carver.

“Jake, I just thought of something,” she said to him. “What about a sound blocking machine. Like musicians use to keep from disturbing their neighbors? I have one by my bed in Boston. It can be set to block sounds either from coming into or going out from around a thirty foot radius. They are available at any techtronics store, and they are tiny. I think it could be really useful. We can activate it when we go over the wall. No one will hear anything even when we shake loose the bars.”

“Good,” responded Jake, “Suhan! Can you arrange for that? The smallest one available.”

“No problem!” replied Suhan.

 “And how about this,” Jake continued. “Do you have any of your sleep formula left?”

“Yes, why?”

“It’s applied like perfume, right? If you touch it to your skin, it enters the bloodstream quickly. If you brought it along, and someone caught you, you’d just touch them with the wand, and they’d be asleep in minutes—eight hours worth,” he declared with a smirk.

“Oh my goodness, you are right! I have plenty left! I hardly ever use it.”

“Perfect!”

“Okay, everyone, listen,” announced Professor Carver. “I have the exact magnetic match to the elements contained in the R-20 PAL. We’re going to use the dissolution compound that Jake was talking about and add the magnetic elements that will find and attach themselves to the player, and only the player. One of you will have to get into the vicinity of the R-20,” he said to Cassandra, “and spray the compound into the air. The microscopic particles will find it, wherever it is, and dissolve it completely.”

“That is amazing,” she said. “How close will we have to be?”

“I don’t know yet, we’ll have to test it.”

“Simon! How long ‘til we have that compound?” Jake bellowed.

“It’ll be here in an hour.”

“What time is it?” Professor Carver said to himself, checking his watch. “Almost nine. That won’t give us a lot of time, so let’s make sure we have everything else we need ready to go, including a perfume atomizer. The particular magnetic elements and a neutral liquid base to contain them can be easily assembled at the main lab…Yoshi!” The tall, wiry scientist came rushing over to the Professor. “Here take these specs to the lab. I want you back here with that compound within an hour.”

“Yessir!”

“I’m also going to need one of the R-20 PALs. Does anyone have one?”

Every member of the team pulled one of the devices out of his or her pocket. Professor Carver laughed. “Good. We may need more than one guinea pig.”

All of the necessary items and compounds had been assembled for the professor to begin working on the spray. The rope ladder, the V-FOG, the sound blocking machine, and the base form of the dissolving liquid in an authentic looking dropper bottle, so they could dispose of all the gadgets if necessary, had been deposited into a small satchel. Shannon was almost finished with the clothes and the hoods.

A wide array of fast food had been brought in so they could all remain energized while working. It all tasted incredibly strange to Cassandra’s altered palate. It was as if it had no real flavor. She didn’t say it out loud, but she couldn’t believe that the team members would eat the kind of junk food that she normally wouldn’t have touched, even in 2120. She had never realized that it so little resembled real food. She felt herself becoming anxious to return to the past that now felt like home.

The minutes ticked by. Close to midnight, Professor Carver turned to Cassandra from the adjustments he was making on the spray. It wasn’t yet working to his satisfaction.

“Cassie, I think I’m getting close with this stuff. Don’t worry; it’ll be ready on time. Why don’t you go in the back and lie down? You need to get a little rest. There’s nothing more you can do right now.”

She suddenly realized she was exhausted. “Well, all right.”

“We’ll wake you up in plenty of time,” he assured her.

Shannon came over and sat down next to her, her full lips pressed firmly together, her square jaw set, and her dark eyes exuding concern. She breathed deeply through her nose and then spoke. “You know Cass, I have one of the gowns here you didn’t take before. Why don’t you take a shower and change into it when you wake up. It’ll make you feel better.”

Yoshi, Simon, and Suhan glanced hopefully in Cassandra’s direction. She realized that her standards of cleanliness no longer matched those of the twenty-second century. She hadn’t had a bath in three days, and she had worn her gown more than a few times without washing it. It occurred to her that she really didn’t notice body odor any more.

“Good idea,” she said to Shannon, “I do not even remember what it feels like to have a shower.” She went into the back room, undressed to her underwear, and lay down on the cot. She thought she was too anxious to sleep, but when there was a gentle knock on the door, it was already six AM. Shannon peeked in.