together a dry account of current…”
That was a decade ago. Still, it was worth a shot. I activated my PicturePhone and asked for directory assistance. “Vancouver, please,” I said to the perky computer-generated face that appeared on my screen. “TRIUMF. T-R-I-U-M-F.”
The image recited the phone number while simultaneously displaying it on my screen. The museum didn’t allow us to use the call-completion feature, since it cost an extra seventy-five cents, so I jotted the number down on a Post-it note, then dictated it back into the phone. After two rings, a man with what might have been a Pakistani accent answered. “Good morning;
“Hello,” I said, surprising myself at how nervous I sounded. “Ching-Mei Huang, please.”
“Dr. Huang is unavailable right now,” he said. “Would you like to leave a message?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, indeed.”
Ching-Mei Huang failed to return the three messages I left for her at TRIUMF, but I finally weaseled her unlisted home number out of somebody who answered the phone late one evening. My palms were sweating as I spoke the string of digits to my phone. Christ, I hadn’t been this nervous since the first time I’d called Tess and asked for a date.
Toronto was 3,300 kilometers from Vancouver; it was a little after ten in the evening my time, which meant it would be just after seven on the west coast. The phone rang three times before the round Bell Canada logo did its usual self-indulgent backflip off the screen. But instead of Dr. Huang’s face, all I got was this graphic:
Then, thinned by what sounded like fear—the distance shouldn’t have affected the quality at all, of course—a voice made its way across the continent to me. “Hello?”
“Hello,” I replied. “May I please speak to Ching-Mei Huang?”
A pause. Finally: “Who’s calling?”
“My name is Brandon Thackeray. I’m with the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.”
“I’m not interested in becoming a member. Good-bye.”
“Wait. I’m not from the membership department. I’m a vertebrate paleontologist.”
“A vert—? How did you get this number?”
“Then you are Dr. Huang?”
“Yes, I am she. How did you get my number?”
I tried to sound jaunty. “It wasn’t easy, believe me.”
“This number is unlisted for a purpose. Please leave me alone.”
I put as much reassuring warmth as I could into my voice. “You certainly keep a low profile,” I said with a laugh.
“That’s no concern of yours.” A pause, while we both tried to assess who should speak next. Finally, quietly, she said, “My phone says you’re calling from area code 905. That’s not Toronto.”
“No, it’s Mississauga, where I live. Just outside of Toronto.”
I heard a sharp exhalation of breath. “And you’re not on a mobile phone, right? So you’re not here in Vancouver?” Her voice brightened slightly, but she still seemed shaken, nervous—hardly the kind of speech I would have thought anyone would have characterized as “precise.” What was it the diary had said?
“Do you have a PicturePhone, Dr. Huang? Could we switch to visual?”
“No.”
Did that mean, No, I don’t have a PicPhone, or No, I won’t turn on its camera? “Uh, fine,” I said at last. “That’s fine.” Suddenly I didn’t know how to continue. What I wanted to ask her about seemed so incredible, so inconceivable. If this was a practical joke, there’s only one person who could have done it: Klicks, now living in Toronto for his sabbatical. I’d kill him if this wasn’t for real. “I’ve been trying to track you down for some time, Dr. Huang. There’s a matter I’d like to discuss with you.”
She still sounded edgy. “Oh, very well. But please be brief.”
“Of course. Do you happen to know Miles Jordan?”
“I knew a Susan Jordan once.”
“No, that wouldn’t be any relation of his. Miles is another paleontologist. He’s with the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drum-heller, Alberta.”
“A great museum,” she said absently. “But what has this got to do with me?”
“Does the word ‘stasis’ mean anything to you?”
“It’s Greek for standstill. What do I win?”
“And that’s all it means to you?”
“Mr. Thackeray, I value my privacy greatly. I don’t wish to seem rude, but I am uncomfortable on the phone.”
I mustered my courage. “All right, Dr. Huang. I put it to you: are you, or were you, doing experiments involving the cessation of the passage of time—a process you referred to as stasis?”
“Where did you get that notion?”
“Please, it’s very important that I know.”
She was silent for several seconds. “Well, yes,” she said at last, “I guess ‘stasis’ would have been a good name for it, although I never called it that. Experiments? Hardly. I came up with a few interesting equations, but that was before—that was a long time ago.”
“So stasis is possible. Tell me: did your research give any indication that—that time travel would be a practical consequence of your equations?”
For the first time, the voice at the other end of the line had real strength. “I see now, Mr.—Thackeray, did you say?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Thackeray, you are a crackpot. Good-bye.”
“No, please. I’m dead seri—”
Dial tone. I told the phone to redial, but the number in Vancouver just rang and rang and rang.
Countdown: 15
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of moral crisis remain neutral.
Martians.
I’d had a hard enough time typing the words “time travel.” But tapping out M-A-R-T-I-A-N-S seemed like asking for a trip to the funny farm. I guess there really are more things in heaven and earth, Brandio, than are dreamt of in my philosophy.
It was close to noon, the hot Mesozoic sun beating down from a silvery-blue sky intermittently visible through gaps in the thick foliage above us. Insects buzzed everywhere, and I kept batting my arms to disperse them.
The three troodons were close enough that I could smell the stench of raw meat on their breath. Their pebbly green skin was almost iridescent in the bright sunlight and their giant yellow eyes reflected back so much light they almost seemed to glow.
“Martians,” I said softly—the word came easier to the tongue than it does to the fingertips. “Incredible.”
The lead troodon, Diamond-snout, did its patented one-two blink. “Thank you,” it rasped, speaking for the Martian jelly creature within its skull.
“But what are you doing here?” I asked.
The elongated green head tilted to one side. “Talking to you.”
