down the line on the top of the left hand page.”
“Davy, he says to open this at random.”
For a change he stops babbling and grabs the paperback I found on Poppa’s special shelf. “The Penguin Book of Australian Verse. Yuck, it smells foul. I hate old paperbacks. Is this your Dad’s? Hang on, there’s a dedication in it. Oh. It’s a present from Hattie, 1965. Who’s Hattie? One of your father’s old girlfriends?”
My stomach jumps. Just more cramps, I tell myself angrily. “It’s my mother. Give it back.”
“No, just a moment, you want me to find you a random bit. Okay, page 178. Now what?”
“First line. Write it down.”
He scribbles, and hands over the sheet. “There you go. Who’s Douglas Stewart?”
“I don’t know.” I turn over my own sheet of memo pad, and put them next to each other, and the cramps really are there, like a jolt of electricity into my abdomen. “Oh my God, David, this is impossible. He told me to write that down before I even got the books out.”
“Hey, that’s what I just wrote down.”
Into the phone, I say, “You knew.”
“I don’t yet.” Rod’s voice is so tense it could cut the wire to the handset. “Read it to me.”
I’m really quite scared, all of a sudden. There’s only one explanation for this, and that’s crazy. “You can control our minds, can’t you?”
He laughs, slightly shrill. “Of course I can’t. Just tell me what David wrote down.”
“What you read out to me before. 122,623. ‘But now she’s in the creek again, that woman made of flame.’”
“Sounds like poetry. Poetry to my ears.” He’s really laughing now, almost giggling. He catches his breath, and I can hear his pen scribbling, I think. “Oh Genevieve, Jenny, you little darling, do you know what we’ve just done? We’ve broken the time barrier, that’s what we’ve done. Oh Stockholm, here I come. I’m off to get drunk.”
“You sound drunk already. How did you do that? Are you a stage magician?”
“Actually I can’t afford to get drunk, Jenny.” I can almost see him brutally pulling himself together. In a tired, sober tone, he adds, “Hours of work still to be done tonight. I have to recalibrate the bloody machine so I can call you back fifteen minutes ago and read these lovely little items out to you so you’ll write them down and be convinced.”
“Convinced of what?”
“Be convinced, Jenny, that I’ve done what no one else in all the history of science has ever managed to do.”
“Are you sure you’re not drunk?”
“Drunk with success. Drunk with joy. Farewell, for the moment, young Jenny of 1995.”
I go so cold I think I’m going to faint. I clutch at the hall table. “Oh shit. You said ‘time barrier,’ You wanted to know what year it was. I don’t think you’re a crazy kook after all. Rod, I think you’re calling me from—”
“Thirty-five years distance, Jenny, that’s how far away I am from you. Over a third of a century. We’re in different time zones, and it’s going to make us both rich and famous, even if I do have to cut Dr. McReady in on it.”
I snatch at that to keep from falling over. “Who’s this Dr. McReady anyway?”
“My supervisor. He’s nominally in charge of the research, but he thinks it can’t be done.”
“I don’t think it can be done either.” My fright is turning into a fit of the giggles. “Time travel? By telephone?”
David grabs my arm and shakes it. His eyes are bugging again. “What? What are you saying to the crackpot, Jen?”
“I’m exhausted, kiddo,” Rod tells me. I stifle my laughter, and he says, “I’ll call back tomorrow, your time.”
“All right.” Then I remember, and I’m furious at myself for forgetting. “You can’t, actually. I spend tomorrow with my mother. Sunday lunch and probably tea.”
There’s a pause while he takes that in. Fortunately he doesn’t pry, or I’d hang up hard in his ear and he can twiddle his thumbs, wherever he is. When ever. Finally he says, “Oh. I’ll try to tune it in to, say, five o’clock the day after that, will you be home then?”
“Monday. Probably.” I don’t know whether to take this seriously or not, but an idea occurs to me. God, wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were true! “Listen, Rod, I think you’re doing this all wrong. All you need to do is give me next week’s Lotto numbers. Isn’t that what you meant by ‘big money’? We could make a million bucks if you really were from the future.”
“The future!” David’s voice cracks, and I realize he’s still here. Disgusted, he says, “You’ve both flipped!” In almost the same moment Rod says, “The future! Jenny, you’ve got it completely wrong. I’m not ringing you from the future.”
I shoosh Davy with my free hand. “You’re not? Then what on earth have we been talking ab—”
“October 7, 1960, Jenny. That’s when I am. You’re the one in the future, kiddo. I’m here, stuck in the present.” And he hangs up.
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