The Wells Bequest (21 page)

The Green Mouse Machine

W
hat does it feel like to kiss the smartest, bravest, most awesome girl in the world? Not just because you're trying to stop time and capture a time machine, but because the two of you both finally figured out you were made for each other?

A little like driving a flying submarine over a storm. No, a little like riding a time machine fast into the future . . . No, not really like either of those. I can't describe it.

“What took you so long?” asked Jaya when we stopped for breath.

“You mean you didn't like it? The kiss went on too long?” I asked, panicky.

“No, silly! I mean, why did you wait so long to kiss me?”

“I don't know. I guess was afraid you didn't . . .” I shrugged.

“You boson!” She hit me on the shoulder.

“Well,
you
could have kissed
me,
you know.”

“I
did,
you complete quark-head!” She hit me again.

The hit turned into a hug and another kiss, and the air filled with a dizzy whirring.

Then I opened my eyes. That whirring wasn't just my blood in my ears—it was the time machine—me, from a minute ago! It was starting to materialize, right at the wrong moment.

I flapped my hand at Past Me, waving him off. The buzzing faded, and the time machine vanished like a rainbow. I closed my eyes.

Soon we were interrupted again. The door banged.

“Ooh,” said a voice—Abigail's. “Looks like
somebody's
been using the green mouse machine!”

Jaya stopped kissing me. “We did not!” she said indignantly. “This is the real thing!”

“The green mouse machine always finds the real thing,” said Abigail. “That's the whole point. I
knew
you guys were meant for each other—I knew it the day I met you, Leo!”

I straightened myself up awkwardly. “What's the green mouse machine?” I asked.

“It's a machine for finding true love,” said Jaya. “It's around here somewhere—I can show you.” She let go of my arm and ran away down the room.

I stared after her. “A machine? How can a machine find true love?”

Abigail said, “Something about ‘wireless psychical currents' encircling the earth. Currents of fate, I think.”

“But what do green mice have to do with true love?”

“That's the name of the book it's from—
The Green Mouse.
I don't know why it's called that, though. I never read it.”

“I did,” said Jaya, coming back from the other end of the room with a little box in her hand. “It's really old-fashioned in a not-so-great way. The green mouse machine only matches people up with people from the exact same background as them. It would never approve of the two of us. Other than that I liked the book okay. It has a lot of funny moments.”

“But why's it called
The Green Mouse
?”

“I don't remember. Some silly reason. It's a very silly book. Look, here's the machine.”

She opened the box. Inside was a little object that looked like the innards of a windup watch. I peered at it, wondering how it worked.

“Anyway,” said Abigail, “I'm sorry to interrupt, but Ms. Minnian sent me down here to get Leo. She wants to talk to you.”

“Go ahead, Leo,” said Jaya. “I have something I need to finish up down here.” She snapped the green mouse box shut and nodded significantly at the time machine. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

I started to leave, then stopped. “You're not going to use the green mouse machine, are you?”

“Of course not, silly! I don't need to. I have you!”

• • •

Ms. Minnian was waiting for me in Dr. Rust's office. She wanted to congratulate me on earning my Wells Bequest key and lecture me about using it carefully.

“Relax, Lucy,” said Doc. “Leo's a cautious boy.”

“No such thing,” said Ms. Minnian. But she smiled.

I told them about Jaya's discovery of the quartz rod.

“Brilliant!” said Doc. “Why didn't I think of that? I take it you tested it?”

“Yeah, I just took a very quick trip,” I said. I found myself blushing furiously. Doc and Ms. Minnian raised their eyebrows at each other. I could tell the lecture about using the Wells Bequest items responsibly was about to flare up again. To distract them, I said, “Jaya and I think it would be safer to keep the rod in the geology section.”

“Hm. You may be right,” said Dr. Rust. “But I'd better talk to Rick Reyes about recategorizing it. He'll probably want to record its new category in the thesaurus.”

“You know, Lee,” said Ms. Minnian, “since we now have a working time machine, do you think we should offer the demo model to the Burton? We could trade it for the Poe gold bug. I'm pretty sure Pem-Po would go for it.” She glanced at me. “I mean Dr. Pemberley-Potts.”

“That's brilliant! It always kills me that we don't have the gold bug in the Corpus,” said Doc.

“Then, if the Burton agreed, we'd just need to get the casque of Amontillado back from the Italians and that would give us all the Poe essentials,” said Ms. Minnian, looking greedy. Were her teeth always so sharp?

Doc turned to me. “What do you think, Leo? As the person responsible for finding the mini model, I'd like to hear your opinion.”

“Me?” I was flattered. “I think it's a great idea. Ms. Minnian's right—we don't really need it anymore.”

“Well, we'll bring the matter up with the board.”

• • •

I got to the repository a little early for my next shift, my heart beating fast at the idea of seeing Jaya again. Abigail was hanging up her coat.

“Is Jaya here yet?” I asked.

“She's upstairs in the Main Exam Room, talking to Simon.”

“Talking to
who
?”

“Simon FitzHenry.”

“What?! What the quark is
he
doing here? How do you even know about him?”

Abigail stared at me. “What are you talking about? He worked here for, like, months! He came over with Dr. Pemberley-Potts. She's meeting with Doc. She brought him over to apologize properly after that business with Francis.”

“But—” Jaya must have used the time machine again today and brought Simon back to life. She must have gone back to the moment after we left Tesla's burning lab and gotten Mark Twain to let Simon's great-great-grandfather go, so he could catch his ship and meet Simon's great-great-grandmother.

My heart sank. Did Jaya really like Simon that much?

Then an even worse thought hit me. The time machine! Dr. Rust was about to give Pem-Po the working model! That meant if Simon could get the librarians at the Burton to let him use it, he would be able to go back in time and stop himself from cheating, and then Jaya and I would never—

I ran for the Main Exam Room. I didn't even to wait for the elevator. I charged up the stairs two at a time.

Simon and Jaya were near the door, standing by a table covered with teapots. “Please, Jaya,” Simon was saying. “I would never have hurt anyone, not really. I just wanted to fix things!”

“Jaya,” I said urgently, “I need to talk to you.”

She glanced at me. “It's okay, Leo,” she said. “Don't worry. I've got this.”

“No—I need to talk to you
right now
!”

I guess she heard how exasperated I was. “Just a minute,” she said to Simon. “Stay right there.” She took me by the arm and marched me out into the hall. “Now, what's so urgent?” she asked me.

“Jaya, what did you do? Doc's giving Pem-Po the time machine! If Simon gets his hands on it, he'll start the whole thing all over again!”

“Calm down, Leo. It's going to be all right, I promise.”

“But what is Simon
doing
here?”

“I thought it was pretty harsh that we killed him off—”

“We didn't kill him!”

“Made him not exist. Whatever. It wasn't fair. I mean, what he did was pretty bad, but not bad enough to justify annihilating him. So I took the time machine back to right after we left, and I talked Mark Twain into letting Mr. Smith go so he could catch his boat. That way Simon still got to be born, but it was perfectly safe because he never had the death ray. The models and all the plans burned up in the fire. While I was at it, I stopped off in 1937 and hid the quartz rod from the 1937 copy of the time machine in the geology collection.”

“But Mr. Smith was there in the lab and saw the death ray being built! He could have built his own, from memory!”

Jaya shook her head. “He's not that smart. It would have taken a genius to build a death ray without the plans or models or research notes. Even Tesla never built it again.”

“So does that mean Simon didn't try to threaten us in this timeline? Or that he did, but he was just bluffing?”

“I'm not sure,” said Jaya. “I think he was about to tell me just now, when you interrupted us. But it doesn't really matter, does it? Either way, he couldn't destroy New York.”

I thought of something. “But Jaya, can't you see how dangerous that was? If he never threatened us in this timeline, we might never have taken the time machine back to 1895. Then when we came back from our old timeline into this one, we would have found copies of ourselves here in the present—the ones who never left! You could have created doubles of us!”

“Would that be so bad? Two Leos would be twice as fun as one!”

“Jaya, be serious! That would have created an inexplicable anomaly! Two of me in one timeline isn't like splitting off a new universe with a separate one in each. Everybody would have noticed if there were two of me here! It would have been big trouble!”

She shook her head. “Come on, Leo. Do you seriously think there's any universe—even one single universe in the universe of universes—where you captured a time machine and we didn't
use
it?”

She was right. I had to smile despite myself. “But still,” I said, “now that Simon's back and the model time machine's going to the Burton, he'll have access to it! He can change everything and stop himself from cheating Francis, and then you won't realize what a boson he is, and then—”

Jaya interrupted. “If you'll just let me finish what I was doing with Simon, you'll see you're worrying about nothing,” she said. She took me by the arm again and marched me back into the Main Exam Room.

• • •

“Please, Jaya!” said Simon, as if I wasn't there. “I came all this way from London to apologize. You have to forgive me! If you'd forgiven me, none of this would ever have happened.”

“Oh, so it's my fault?” said Jaya. “This is your idea of an apology?”

“I didn't say that. But I did it for you! Please, won't you forgive me?”

“All right, all right, I forgive you. I already forgave you. That's not the point.”

“You do? Then you'll give me another chance?” Simon flung his arms around her. “I know long-distance relationships can be hard, but with the resources of the Burton and—”

She pushed him away—which was a good thing because I was about to do it myself. “Get off me, Simon. I said I forgave you, not that I liked you. I have a boyfriend already. Not that I would ever go out with you even if I didn't.”

I felt dizzy. Could she really mean
me
?

Simon looked like he was about to leap over all the teapots and tear out my throat.

Jaya took a little box out of her pocket. “Hold on, Simon. Stand still a second, will you?” she said. She opened the box, took out the green mouse machine, and put it down on the table next to a teapot. Then she pressed a little lever.

A tentacle uncoiled, reaching toward Simon.

Crack!
The tip of the tentacle sparked blue. “There,” Jaya said. “That should fix things.”

The door to the Main Exam Room opened behind Simon and a girl walked in. She was pretty, with shiny brown hair and an unpleasant face. “Excuse me,” she said. “Those are my teapots. I was still using them.”

Simon spun around. He gasped. His eyes darkened to a deeper blue, and two spots of pink flashed across his pale cheeks. Even his hair looked blonder, as if a ray of sun had hit it.

The girl stared back at him. She was blushing too.

“I'm Simon,” he said, holding out his hand. “Simon FitzHenry.”

“Campaspe Castle.” The girl took his hand and held it.

Jaya put the green mouse machine back in its case and snapped it shut. “See, Leo? It looks like things are going to work out. Come on.”

We walked away to the stacks, hand in hand.

• • •

I spent most of my spare time for the next few weeks working on my robot project. Jaya helped me, when she wasn't dragging me off to ice-skate or meet her sister or hunt for anti-gravity machines at the weekend flea market in my neighborhood.