Connie Willis - Time Out

“I thought we agreed not to talk about Vanessa,” the man said.

“I am not talking about Vanessa. I am talking about Heather.”

Andrew sat back down in his seat, fastened his seat belt, and pretended to read the proposal until everybody but the flight attendants had gotten off the plane. The proposal didn’t make any more sense now than when he had read it in earnest.

He looked longingly at the emergency-slide handle and then stuck the proposal in his duffel bag and walked out through the covered walkway and into the terminal. Dr. Young and a fiftyish woman with disorganized hair were the only people left at the gate. The woman was looking interestedly down the hall.

“Dr. Simons,” Dr. Young said, coming forward to shake his hand. “I want you to meet Dr. Lejeune. Dr. Lejeune, Dr. Simons is going to run the psychology end of our little project. Dr. Lejeune?”

Dr. Lejeune came over and shook his hand, still trying to peer down the corridor. “This woman just hit some man over the head with a tennis racket,” she said.

“She found out about Heather,” Andrew said.

“We’re very excited to have you working with us,” Dr. Young said. “I’ll be working with the oscillator, and Dr. Lejeune will be running the computer interp.”

“Since when?” Dr. Lejeune said.

Andrew began looking for emergency exits. There didn’t appear to be any.

“Dr. Gillis told me I could choose whatever staff I needed. I told him I wanted you as my second in command.”

Dr. Lejeune was glancing around as if she were looking for a tennis racket to hit Dr. Young over the head with. “Did you also tell him I think your project is completely addlepated?”

I should have had at least two more Scotches, Andrew thought. Or what were those things he had drunk when he ushered at Stephanie Forrester’s wedding? Clockstoppers. He should have had a clockstopper.

“Addlepated?” Dr. Young said. “Addlepated! Dr. Simons here doesn’t think it’s addlepated. He came all the way from Tibet to work on this project. Tell us, Dr. Simons, is ‘addlepated’ the word that springs to mind about this project?”

The word that sprang to mind was disaster. He should have had a lot of clockstoppers. Ten. Or fifteen.

“No,” he said.

“You see?” Dr. Young said triumphantly to Dr. Lejeune. He took Andrew’s bag. “We’ll go straight back to the lab and I’ll show you the oscillator. And then I’ll outline my theory in more detail.”

His junior year hadn’t been half-bad, all things considered, Andrew thought, walking out to the car with them. He had had to usher at Stephanie Forrester’s wedding, and when the minister had read that part about, “let him speak now or forever hold his peace,” the entire congregation had turned and looked at him, but otherwise it hadn’t been half bad.

Dr. Lejeune didn’t speak to Dr. Young on the way home from the airport even though he didn’t realize until they got to the Porsche that there wasn’t room for all three of them and then told her to take Andrew’s duffel bag and go find a taxi. Andrew, who was looking either jet-lagged or sorry he had ever left Tibet, insisted on being the one to take the taxi, and Dr. Young spent the trip back to the university telling her how her attitude was undermining the project. She maintained a stony silence.

She maintained it through his announcing that their research was not going to be done at the university but at an elementary school in a town called Henley that was halfway across the state and through his unveiling of the temporal oscillator, even though it was close on that one. It looked like a giant lava lamp.

She talked to Dr. Gillis instead, but she didn’t get anywhere. Dr. Gillis refused to take her refusal to work on the project seriously. Worse, he thought shiftable hodiechrons and temporal oscillation were entirely plausible, and when she told him she thought Max was having some kind of midlife crisis, Dr. Gillis stiffened and said, “Dr. Young is three years younger than I am. I would hardly call him middle-aged. Besides, he is far too intelligent and sensible a man to have a midlife crisis.”

“That’s what I thought,” Dr. Lejeune said, “till I saw the Porsche.”

She went back to the lab and Andrew Simons, who was staring at the temporal oscillator. He looked terrible. Max hadn’t given him a minute’s rest since he got there, but she had the feeling it was more than that. He looked unhappy. He needs to get married, she thought. I really should introduce him to Bev Frantz. She’s pretty and smart and unmarried. She’d be perfect.

“How can this be a temporal oscillator?” Andrew said. “It looks like a lava lamp.”

Dr. Young came in, beaming. “I’ve just been talking to the school secretary in Henley.” The top of his head was bright pink with excitement. “I decided you needed an assistant, Dr. Simons, and they just called to say they’d hired someone. Her name’s Carolyn Hendricks. She’s perfect. She’ll be helping you with the screening and getting coffee and things like that.”

“Why does she need to be perfect if all she’s doing is getting the coffee?” Dr. Lejeune almost asked, and then remembered she wasn’t speaking to him.

“She’s forty years old, married, secretary of the PTA, and has two daughters. Her husband coaches the girls’ gymnastics team. The seasons’ just started,” he added, as if that were perfect, too. “Which reminds me—” he said, and hurried out.

Why is her husband’s coaching a bunch of teenaged girls in leotards perfect? she thought. Does he expect her to fly off the uneven bars and into the past?

“Have you ever heard of a drink called a clockstopper?” Andrew asked, still staring at the lava lamp. “I used to drink them in college.”

“No,” Dr. Lejeune said, frowning at the door Dr. Young had just left by.

“Beer and wine,” Andrew said. “That’s what they were made out of. The clockstoppers.”

“Oh,” said Dr. Lejeune, still frowning. “We called them cataclysms.”

Carolyn dropped Wendy at the middle school and drove over to the elementary.

“Where am I supposed to go?” she asked Sherri in the office. “The library?”

“No,” Sherri said, handing Carolyn a sheaf of papers. “You’re downstairs in the music room.”

“Where’s music?”

“In with the PE classes. They divided the gym in half with masking tape.”

“And the music teacher stood for that?”

“She had to. Old Paperwork told her how much money Dr. Young was paying to use the school for this project.”

“If he’s paying so much, why didn’t he let him use the library?”

“I don’t know. The music room is pretty cramped.”

“I know,” Carolyn said. “I did hearing tests in there last year. The room’s L-shaped, and the light switch is at the top of this hall part next to the door and about a million miles from the main part of the room. The third-graders were always switching it off on their way to recess and leaving me in the dark, because there aren’t any windows. Can’t you see if we can be in the library instead?”

“I’ll ask Old Paperwork,” Sherri said. “I don’t know what you’re griping about, though. I’d love being stuck in a small space with a gorgeous-looking man like that.”

“Dr. Young ?”

“No. The guy you’re working with.” She fumbled through the papers on the counter. “Andrew Something.” She picked up a pink sheet and looked at it. “Andrew Simons. Speaking of gorgeous looking, how’s that adorable husband of yours?”

“Adorable,” Carolyn said, smiling. “When I get to see him. Gymnastics is our worst time of the year. And this year’s been even worse because of his having to hire a new assistant coach.”