Aeroplanes (Ch19)

Theda finds out the truth about Conlin, but will she believe it? Chapter 19 in THEDA'S TIME MACHINE

Welcome back, readers! And welcome to all the new subscribers. I’m so glad to have you and look forward to a great year of stories. It’s been a crazy summer of a lot of youth baseball and a trip to Greece to see my husband’s family, but now I’m back home and ready to go. I hope you had a wonderful summer or winter (welcome Australian and New Zealand subscribers).

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Flamethrower, Interrupted

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Conlin dragged on his cigarette, cupping his hand over it like Cary Grant, pinching the butt between his thumb and pointer finger. He met Theda Evora in the movie theater not even an hour ago and since a fierce cloud cover darkened Camp Funston in an icy gloom, kicking up dirt devils around his ankles in tiny tornadoes, dusting his father’s Great War army uniform.

He leaned against one of the antique airplanes that in 1918 were just a whisper from the ones currently dog fighting in the poison gas skies of Europe. He dropped the smoke and crushed it. Across the field, hands shoved deep in her dark red overcoat, and shoulder purse slapping against her hip, Miss Theodora Evora strode toward him with hunting eagle intensity.

“You got the eyes of a future-tellin’ gypsy,” his grandpa used to say to him. “You see a fella and you know exactly what he’s all about before he even opens his trap.” In the army they called it a bullshit detector. Despite this, he reserved forming a solid opinion of Miss Evora. Something was nagging at him, and he didn’t know what it was. He had expected two things that hadn’t happened: one, she would have gone into hysterics in the movie theater, drawing attention to them and forcing him to flee, or two, not showing up here at his request at all. He had been wrong on both counts.

She was scared. Her eyes had the look he’d seen in countless wartime soldiers submerged in violence for prolonged periods of time. She hadn’t just stumbled into trouble with the anarchists, she had courted it for a year before the incident at the Federal Building. Then, in a move that no one could call cowardly, she foiled the entire plot with a note on the bomb-stuffed suitcase, sparing lives while simultaneously putting her own in peril and turning Philadelphia into a viper’s nest of danger. She had guts, he’d give her that.

Moments later she stood in front of him, not saying anything. Another interesting aspect. Women usually felt the need to slay silence with banter.

Conlin pulled from his coat the envelope Dr. Andersen had given him before he died.

“I know what’s in there, and I don’t want to see it,” she removed her right hand from her pocket and placed it on her purse. A heavy bulge pulled the purse in an awkward sideways angle. She’s got a damn gun. Interesting.

Theda went on. “I don’t want to stand here in the freezing cold and hash out the past. I’m through with that life. Whatever I did, I’m sorry for. Do you understand? If Maxim sent you, then you can either tell them that you found me or I can make it worth your while that you never have to work a day in your life again.”

Conlin smiled. “You trying to pay me off? How much?”

“More than you can imagine, maybe…”

“Aren’t you wondering how I got the watch?”

“You know Maxim. I gave it to him the last time I saw him.”

He pulled her anarchist boyfriend’s mugshot from the envelope and handed it to her. She hesitated in taking it and he knew she was right-handed and didn’t want to take her hand that far from the pistol. But she did take it, glancing down fast and back to Conlin’s eyes.

“Same photo from fifteen minutes ago,” she said.

He approached her slowly but didn’t back away. Upside down, he glanced at the photograph and tapped the date. 10- 5 - 20. “See this?”

She glanced down. “Yes. They’re numbers.”

“Not the date?”

“I don’t see how it could be the date, unless there’s some mistake.”

“October the fifth in the year nineteen-twenty. It’s no mistake.”

Her large brown eyes narrowed slightly, fear being replaced with suspicion, as if the threat of him was ebbing as she considered if he were just a crazy person.

Conlin continued. “He didn’t pull off the bombing of the Federal Building in Philadelphia, but I suspect you’ve read the papers and know that by now. Thanks to your interference, many lives were saved. But Maxim Petrovsky set off a bomb in New York City. Not the famous Wall Street bombing that was the work of Italian anarchists, but this little stunt killed five people. Before they caught up with him, he sent the major newspapers a series of letters known afterward as the Petrovsky Papers.”

“This date…”

“Hasn’t happened yet. That photograph was given to me with the watch.”

“From whom?”

“From a man named Dr. Michael Andersen. I believe you watched him die in the street a few nights ago.”

That shook her. She backed up a step. Her right hand fell to her side and for a moment he wondered if she just might pull the gun on him.

“What if I told you,” he went on in the easiest voice he could muster. “That this doctor and I came a long way just to deliver this information to you. We followed you all the way from Philadelphia. We watched you at the Federal Building with that suitcase of explosives in your hand, but we already knew that there would be no explosion that day. And what if I told you that when he walked into that street the other night, he knew he was going to die? But he did it anyway?”

Her mouth gaped but she gained control almost instantly. Conlin was impressed. He began to see how she was different. She had a rare quality that he had sensed on very few people. It was an essence of both danger and competence. He began to wonder if all of them…all the time travelers…had the same qualities that allowed them to do the impossible.

She spoke in a hushed but deliberate tone. “Mr. Conlin, I have to say that I’ve never been a part of such a cryptic conversation. If you have a point, I suggest you get to it.” She handed the photograph back to him.

“Let me show you one more thing.” He took two sheets from the envelope. “Read it aloud, if you would, please.”

“It’s a doctor’s ledger,” she muttered. Then she began to read. “March 7th, 1918. Fort Riley, Camp Funston. Seven men have been admitted to the Infirmary. The first, Albert Gitchell (cook) at approximately 3 p.m. Complaining of severe cold. Fever. Shortness of breath. Sweating. Severe headache. Admitted to bed number 17. Shortly after Corporal Lee Drake was admitted with the exact same symptoms. Followed by the seven more men, their names below in the ledger. Diagnosed all with influenza.”

“That’s all he wrote,” Conlin said. “Because after that, there were so many sick men that there was no more time to write about it.”

“All I see is a ledger from someone who got his dates mixed up. Today is March the third.”

Conlin shook his head. “It’s not incorrect. Look at the next page. Read that one, too, if you don’t mind.”

It was a newspaper clipping yellowed with age, but laminated. He watched as she felt it, perplexed. There would be nothing like that for many years.

“The headline. Six million deaths from influenza.” She looked up and Conlin nodded to her to keep going. “It’s the New York Times. Six million deaths from influenza. This is Estimate For World For Past 12 Weeks. RECALLS BLACK DEATH. Flu Five Times Deadlier Than World War. London, December 20, 1918. The Times medical correspondent says that it seems reasonable to believe that throughout the world six million persons perished from influenza and pneumonia during the last three months. It has been estimated that the war caused the death of twenty million persons for four and a half years. Thus the correspondent points out, influenza has proved itself five times deadlier than war because in the same period at its epidemic rate influenza would have killed 100 million.”

Theda looked up from the papers. “I would love to say I understand, Mr. Conlin, but I’m completely confused. And as to these dates,” she leaned on the word and simultaneously raised her eyebrows, “It’s a mystery as to what I’m supposed to make of them. Unless you somehow flew here from a future year.” She smiled without humor.

“I did,” he said simply.

“Well then! That settles it!” She shuffled the papers together sloppily and thrust them toward him with a stiff arm. “Maybe while you’re telling fortunes like a roadside gypsy, you can tell me when the war ends?”

He hadn’t thought of how he was going to tell her the whole truth and now that it was here, no matter what came out of his mouth, it sounded like bullshit. He even felt ridiculous saying it, and it was all true. “The war ends on November the eleventh this year. Day known as Armistice Day after that, but it’s not the end. Another war comes around. One we all fight in.”

"And what year are you from?”

He ignored the mocking tone. “Nineteen Forty-six.”

She laughed and her shoulders dropped in relief. Only a few moments before he was certain she would pull a pistol from her purse and shoot him.

“Don’t think I don’t know what this sounds like, because I do. I didn’t believe it at first either, until I did it.” She walked to the propeller and touched it, her expression amused and no longer afraid.

“How extraordinary! Like a character from H.G. Wells. I’m honored.” She half-bowed.

“Miss Evora, listen…”

She dropped her hand from the propeller and stood in front of him. “No, you listen. I don’t know who you really are, and I don’t know what happened to your parter the other evening, but I can’t say that I’m all that sad about it, either. You were following me in Philadelphia. Fine. I did things there that I’m not proud of, but again, I left before I hurt anyone. I’m an educated woman, Mr. Conlin, one who has studied science and if you think that I’m going to believe this fantastical tale of yours, you are sorely mistaken. I don’t believe in charms and spells.”

“You believe in science,” he said simply. “And science evolves, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, but not to the impossible,” she snapped.

“I’m going to show you one more thing,” he said, thrusting his hand into the envelope and pulling out the last document that he had hoped would convince her. She scoffed, hands back in her pockets and not hovering over the pistol in the purse.

He held the paper to her, but she didn’t take it. Behind her, a large black cloud was forming, its long tail touching land somewhere outside of Camp Funston. A terrible stench creeped into the air. It smelled like burned animal fur, acidic. He could tell she smelled it, too.

“It’s March the third, 1918,” he said. “Dr. Andersen and I didn’t just come through time to find you. There is a man named Thrax who is working with the doctors at Camp Funston. Someone who needs to be stopped at all costs.”

“Stopped from what?”

“From creating the 1918 flu.”

“You can’t create a flu.”

He lowered his arm with the paper. “Thrax can. We know he came here and why he’s here. And he’s working at that medical building with all the other doctors. Including your father.”

She laughed, and this time it sounded genuine. Then she seemed to spot something at the edge of the field and began to move away from him. “Mr. Conlin, I’ll bid you a good afternoon. The weather has turned on us, as has your fantastical tale. I do hope you write it all down so you can make a living. An imagination such as yours is truly a blessing for the right audience.” She about faced and hurried across the field, wind whipping her coat around her long black skirt.

Conlin turned his back against the wind and slid the document inside the envelope. She didn’t believe him, which was the expected. Andersen was convinced the way to find Thrax was through Dr. Evora and his daughter, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe Conlin was going to have to operate on his own.

He wondered if she had read the last paper if it would have made a difference. The news article about the deaths of the famous Dr. Harold Evora and his wife, dead of the flu, may have changed her mind.

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