Portable Childhoods Read online

  I drop my armload of books on my desk with a thud. Dr. Raymond Chambers is the chairman of the Physics department, and a Nobel Prize winner, which even at Berkeley is a very, very big deal. Rumor has it he’s working on some top-secret government project that’s a shoo-in for a second trip to Sweden.

  “Yeah, he wants to see you in his office, pronto. He said something about Sara Baxter Clarke. She’s that crackpot from the ’50s, right? The one who died mysteriously?”

  I wince. “That’s her. I did my dissertation on her and her work.” I wish I’d brought another sweater. This one has holes in both elbows. I’d planned a day in the library, not a visit with the head of the department.

  Ted looks at me with his mouth open. “Not many chick scientists to choose from, huh? And you got a post-doc here doing that? Crazy world.” He puts his book down and stretches. “Gotta run. I’m a week behind in my lab work. Real science, you know?”

  I don’t even react. It’s only a month into the term, and he’s been on my case about one thing or another—being a woman, being a dyke, being close to thirty—from day one. He’s a jerk, but I’ve got other things to worry about. Like Dr. Chambers, and whether I’m about to lose my job because he found out I’m an expert on a crackpot.

  Sara Baxter Clarke has been my hero since I was a kid. My pop was an army technician. He worked on radar systems, and we traveled a lot—six months in Reykjavik, then the next six in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Mom always told us we were gypsies, and tried to make it seem like an adventure. But when I was eight, Mom and my brother Jeff were killed in a bus accident on Guam. After that it didn’t seem like an adventure any more.

  Pop was a lot better with radar than he was with little girls. He couldn’t quite figure me out. I think I had too many variables for him. When I was ten, he bought me dresses and dolls, and couldn’t understand why I wanted a stack of old physics magazines the base library was throwing out. I liked science. It was about the only thing that stayed the same wherever we moved. I told Pop I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up, but he said scientists were men, and I’d just get married.

  I believed him, until I discovered Sara Baxter Clarke in one of those old magazines. She was British, went to MIT, had her doctorate in theoretical physics at twenty-two. At Berkeley, she published three brilliant articles in very, very obscure journals. In 1956, she was scheduled to deliver a controversial fourth paper at an international physics conference at Stanford. She was the only woman on the program, and she was just twenty-eight.

  No one knows what was in her last paper. The night before she was supposed to speak, her car went out of control and plunged over a cliff at Devil’s Slide—a remote stretch of coast south of San Francisco. Her body was washed out to sea. The accident rated two inches on the inside of the paper the next day—right under a headline about some vice raid—but made a small uproar in the physics world. None of her papers or notes were ever found; her lab had been ransacked. The mystery was never solved.

  I was fascinated by the mystery of her the way other kids were intrigued by Amelia Earhart. Except nobody’d ever heard of my hero. In my imagination, Sara Baxter Clarke and I were very much alike. I spent a lot of days pretending I was a scientist just like her, and even more lonely nights talking to her until I fell asleep.

  So after a master’s in Physics, I got a Ph.D. in the History of Science—studying her. Maybe if my obsession had been a little more practical, I wouldn’t be sitting on a couch outside Dr. Chambers’s office, picking imaginary lint off my sweater, trying to pretend I’m not panicking. I taught science in a junior high for a year. If I lose this fellowship, I suppose I could do that again. It’s a depressing thought.

  The great man’s secretary finally buzzes me into his office. Dr. Chambers is a balding, pouchy man in an immaculate, perfect suit. His office smells like lemon furniture polish and pipe tobacco. It’s wood-paneled, plushly carpeted, with about an acre of mahogany desk. A copy of my dissertation sits on one corner.

  “Dr. McCullough.” He closes his laptop and waves me to a chair. “You seem to be quite an expert on Sara Baxter Clarke.”

  “She was a brilliant woman,” I say nervously, and hope that’s the right direction for the conversation.

  “Indeed. What do you make of her last paper, the one she never presented?” He picks up my work and turns to a page marked with a pale green Post-It. “‘An Argument for a Practical Tempokinetics?’” He lights his pipe and looks at me through the smoke.

  “I’d certainly love to read it,” I say, taking a gamble. I’d give anything for a copy of that paper. I wait for the inevitable lecture about wasting my academic career studying a long-dead crackpot.

  “You would? Do you actually believe Clarke had discovered a method for time travel?” he asks. “Time travel, Dr. McCullough?”

  I take a bigger gamble. “Yes, I do.”

  Then Dr. Chambers surprises me. “So do I. I’m certain of it. I was working with her assistant, Jim Kennedy. He retired a few months after the accident. It’s taken me fifty years to rediscover what was tragically lost back then.”

  I stare at him in disbelief. “You’ve perfected time travel?”

  He shakes his head. “Not perfected. But I assure you, tempokinetics is a reality.”

  Suddenly my knees won’t quite hold me. I sit down in the padded leather chair next to his desk and stare at him. “You’ve actually done it?”

  He nods. “There’s been a great deal of research on tempokinetics in the last fifty years. Very hush-hush, of course. A lot of government money. But recently, several key discoveries in high-intensity gravitational field theory have made it possible for us to finally construct a working tempokinetic chamber.”

  I’m having a hard time taking this all in. “Why did you want to see me?” I ask.

  He leans against the corner of his desk. “We need someone to talk to Dr. Clarke.”

  “You mean she’s alive?” My heart skips several beats.

  He shakes his head. “No.”

  “Then—?”

  “Dr. McCullough, I approved your application to this university because you know more about Sara Clarke and her work than anyone else we’ve found. I’m offering you a once in a lifetime opportunity.” He clears his throat. “I’m offering to send you back in time to attend the 1956 International Conference for Experimental Physics. I need a copy of Clarke’s last paper.”

  I just stare at him. This feels likes some sort of test, but I have no idea what the right response is. “Why?” I ask finally.

  “Because our apparatus works, but it’s not practical,” Dr. Chambers says, tamping his pipe. “The energy requirements for the gravitational field are enormous. The only material that’s even remotely feasible is an isotope they’ve developed up at the Lawrence Lab, and there’s only enough of it for one round trip. I believe Clarke’s missing paper contains the solution to our energy problem.”

  After all these years, it’s confusing to hear someone taking Dr. Clarke’s work seriously. I’m so used to being on the defensive about her, I don’t know how to react. I slip automatically into scientist mode—detached and rational. “Assuming your tempokinetic chamber is operational, how do you propose that I locate Dr. Clarke?”

  He picks up a piece of stiff ivory paper and hands it to me. “This is my invitation to the opening reception of the conference Friday night, at the St. Francis Hotel. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend. I was back east that week. Family matters.”

  I look at the engraved paper in my hand. Somewhere in my files is a xerox copy of one of these invitations. It’s odd to hold a real one. “This will get me into the party. Then you’d like me to introduce myself to Sara Baxter Clarke, and ask her for a copy of her unpublished paper?”

  “In a nutshell. I can give you some cash to help, er, convince her if necessary. Frankly, I don’t care how you do it. I want that paper, Dr. McCullough.”

  He looks a little agitated now, and there’s a shrill undertone to his
voice. I suspect Dr. Chambers is planning to take credit for what’s in the paper, maybe even hoping for that second Nobel. I think for a minute. Dr. Clarke’s will left everything to Jim Kennedy, her assistant and fiancé. Even if Chambers gets the credit, maybe there’s a way to reward the people who actually did the work. I make up a large, random number.

  “I think $30,000 should do it.” I clutch the arm of the chair and rub my thumb nervously over the smooth polished wood.

  Dr. Chambers starts to protest, then just waves his hand. “Fine. Fine. Whatever it takes. Funding for this project is not an issue. As I said, we only have enough of the isotope to power one trip into the past and back—yours. If you recover the paper successfully, we’ll be able to develop the technology for many, many more excursions. If not—” he lets his sentence trail off.

  “Other people have tried this?” I ask, warily. It occurs to me I may be the guinea pig, usually an expendable item.

  He pauses for a long moment. “No. You’ll be the first. Your records indicate you have no family, is that correct?”

  I nod. My father died two years ago, and the longest relationship I’ve ever had only lasted six months. But Chambers doesn’t strike me as a liberal. Even if I was still living with Nancy, I doubt if he would count her as family. “It’s a big risk. What if I decline?”

  “Your post-doc application will be reviewed,” he shrugs. “I’m sure you’ll be happy at some other university.”

  So it’s all or nothing. I try to weigh all the variables, make a reasoned decision. But I can’t. I don’t feel like a scientist right now. I feel like a ten-year-old kid, being offered the only thing I’ve ever wanted—the chance to meet Sara Baxter Clarke.

  “I’ll do it,” I say.

  “Excellent.” Chambers switches gears, assuming a brisk, business-like manner. “You’ll leave a week from today at precisely 6:32 a.m. You cannot take anything—underwear, clothes, shoes, watch—that was manufactured after 1956. My secretary has a list of antique clothing stores in the area, and some fashion magazines of the times.” He looks at my jeans with distaste. “Please choose something appropriate for the reception. Can you do anything with your hair?”

  My hair is short. Nothing radical, not in Berkeley. It’s more like early Beatles—what they called a pixie cut when I was a little girl—except I was always too tall and gawky to be a pixie. I run my fingers self-consciously through it and shake my head.

  Chambers sighs and continues. “Very well. Now, since we have to allow for the return of Clarke’s manuscript, you must take something of equivalent mass—and also of that era. I’ll give you the draft copy of my own dissertation. You will be also be supplied with a driver’s license and university faculty card from the period, along with packets of vintage currency. You’ll return with the manuscript at exactly 11:37 Monday morning. There will be no second chance. Do you understand?”

  I nod, a little annoyed at his patronizing tone of voice. “If I miss the deadline, I’ll be stuck in the past forever. Dr. Clarke is the only other person who could possibly send me home, and she won’t be around on Monday morning. Unless—?” I let the question hang in the air.

  “Absolutely not. There is one immutable law of tempokinetics, Dr. McCullough. You cannot change the past. I trust you’ll remember that?” he says, standing.

  Our meeting is over. I leave his office with the biggest news of my life. I wish I had someone to call and share it with. I’d settle for someone to help me shop for clothes.

  Friday, February 17, 2006. 6:20 a.m.

  The supply closet on the ground floor of LeConte Hall is narrow and dimly lit, filled with boxes of rubber gloves, lab coats, shop towels. Unlike many places on campus, the Physics building hasn’t been remodeled in the last fifty years. This has always been a closet, and it isn’t likely to be occupied at 6:30 on any Friday morning.

  I sit on the linoleum floor, my back against a wall, dressed in an appropriate period costume. I think I should feel nervous, but I feel oddly detached. I sip from a cup of lukewarm 7-11 coffee and observe. I don’t have any role in this part of the experiment—I’m just the guinea pig. Dr. Chambers’s assistants step carefully over my outstretched legs and make the final adjustments to the battery of apparatus that surrounds me.

  At exactly 6:28 by my antique Timex, Dr. Chambers himself appears in the doorway. He shows me a thick packet of worn bills and the bulky, rubber-banded typescript of his dissertation, then slips both of them into a battered leather briefcase. He places the case on my lap and extends his hand. But when I reach up to shake it, he frowns and takes the 7-11 cup.

  “Good luck, Dr. McCullough,” he says formally. Nothing more. What more would he say to a guinea pig? He looks at his watch, then hands the cup to a young man in a black t-shirt, who types in one last line of code, turns off the light, and closes the door.

  I sit in the dark and begin to get the willies. No one has ever done this. I don’t know if the cool linoleum under my legs is the last thing I will ever feel. Sweat drips down between my breasts as the apparatus begins to hum. There is a moment of intense—sensation. It’s not sound, or vibration, or anything I can quantify. It’s as if all the fingernails in the world are suddenly raked down all the blackboards, and in the same moment oxygen is transmuted to lead. I am pressed to the floor by a monstrous force, but every hair on my body is erect. Just when I feel I can’t stand it any more, the humming stops.

  My pulse is racing, and I feel dizzy, a little nauseous. I sit for a minute, half-expecting Dr. Chambers to come in and tell me the experiment has failed, but no one comes. I try to stand—my right leg has fallen asleep—and grope for the light switch near the door.

  In the light from the single bulb, I see that the apparatus is gone, but the gray metal shelves are stacked with the same boxes of gloves and shop towels. My leg all pins and needles, I lean against a brown cardboard box stenciled Bayside Laundry Service, San Francisco 3, California.

  It takes me a minute before I realize what’s odd. Either those are very old towels, or I’m somewhere pre–ZIP CODE.

  I let myself out of the closet, and walk awkwardly down the empty hallway, my spectator pumps echoing on the linoleum. I search for further confirmation. The first room I peer into is a lab—high stools in front of black slab tables with bunsen burners, gray boxes full of dials and switches. A slide rule at every station.

  I’ve made it.

  Friday, February 17, 1956. 7:00 a.m.

  The campus is deserted on this drizzly February dawn, as is Telegraph Avenue. The streetlights are still on—white lights, not yellow sodium—and through the mist I can see faint lines of red and green neon on stores down the avenue. I feel like Marco Polo as I navigate through a world that is both alien and familiar. The buildings are the same, but the storefronts and signs look like stage sets or photos from old Life magazines.

  It takes me more than an hour to walk downtown. I am disoriented by each shop window, each passing car. I feel as if I’m a little drunk, walking too attentively through the landscape, and not connected to it. Maybe it’s the colors. Everything looks too real. I grew up with grainy black-and-white TV reruns and ’50s technicolor films that have faded over time, and it’s disconcerting that this world is not overlaid with that pink-orange tinge.

  The warm aromas of coffee and bacon lure me into a hole-in-the-wall café. I order the special—eggs, bacon, hash browns, and toast. The toast comes dripping with butter, and the jelly is in a glass jar, not a little plastic tub. When the bill comes it is 55¢. I leave a generous dime tip, then catch the yellow F bus and ride down Shattuck Avenue, staring at the round-fendered black Chevys and occasional pink Studebakers that fill the streets.

  The bus is full of morning commuters—men in dark jackets and hats, women in dresses and hats. In my tailored suit I fit right in. I’m surprised that no one looks ’50s—retro ’50s—the ’50s that filtered down to the next century. No poodle skirts, no Da haircuts. All the men remind me of my Pop. A man
in a gray felt hat has the Chronicle, and I read over his shoulder. Eisenhower is considering a second term. The San Francisco police chief promises a crackdown on vice. Peanuts tops the comics page and there’s a Rock Hudson movie playing at the Castro Theatre. Nothing new there.

  As we cross the Bay Bridge I’m amazed at how small San Francisco looks—the skyline is carved stone, not glass-and-steel towers. A green Muni streetcar takes me down the middle of Market Street to Powell. I check into the St. Francis, the city’s finest hotel. My room costs less than I’ve paid for a night in a Motel 6.

  All my worldly goods fit on the desktop—Chambers’s manuscript; a brown leather wallet with a driver’s license, a Berkeley faculty card, and twenty-three dollars in small bills; the invitation to the reception tonight; and 30,000 dollars in banded stacks of fifty-dollar bills. I pull three bills off the top of one stack and put the rest in the drawer, under the cream-colored hotel stationery. I have to get out of this suit and these shoes.

  Woolworth’s has a toothbrush and other plastic toiletries, and a tin “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” alarm clock. I find a pair of pleated pants, an Oxford-cloth shirt, and wool sweater at the City of Paris. Macy’s Men’s Shop yields a pair of “dungarees” and two t-shirts I can sleep in—69 cents each. A snippy clerk gives me the eye in the Boys department, so I invent a nephew, little Billy, and buy him black basketball sneakers that are just my size.

  After a shower and a change of clothes, I try to collect my thoughts, but I’m too keyed up to sit still. In a few hours I’ll actually be in the same room as Sara Baxter Clarke. I can’t distinguish between fear and excitement, and spend the afternoon wandering aimlessly around the city, gawking like a tourist.

  Friday, February 17, 1956. 7:00 p.m.

  Back in my spectator pumps and my tailored navy suit, I present myself at the doorway of the reception ballroom and surrender my invitation. The tuxedoed young man looks over my shoulder, as if he’s expecting someone behind me. After a moment he clears his throat.