The Wells Bequest Read online

  She laughed softly. “It winks at all the girls. Apparently that almost got its inventor killed. The emperor he made it for didn’t like having his concubines winked at. Come have lunch with me. It’s my lunch break.”

  “All right.” I could hardly believe it.

  I walked the Chinese robot back to the reserve desk, and Jaya pushed the others on a cart.

  “Are you taking lunch now?” the English guy asked Jaya. “If you give me a minute, I’ll come with you—we need to discuss your guest page application.”

  “Sorry, Simon, I can’t today,” said Jaya. “I’m eating with Leo. Anyway, I’m not sure yet if I’m applying.”

  “Oh, you really should! It’s a fantastic opportunity—the Burton doesn’t take many guest pages.”

  “I’m sure it would be fascinating,” said Jaya. “London’s great. The thing is, Francis wants the job so badly. I’d hate to stand in his way.”

  “You’re terribly unselfish, Jaya. You ought to think of yourself sometimes. It would be brilliant to have you in London.”

  “Well, I’ll think about it,” said Jaya. “Leo and I need to get going now. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

  “Right. Another time, then,” said the English guy. He glared at me. His eyes might have been the death rays in Gravity Force III.

  I walked to the elevator with Jaya, fizzing with happiness.

  I tried to think of something to say while the elevator went slowly downstairs and while Jaya said hi to the page at the front desk today—an Asian guy with longish hair—and held the door open for me.

  At last, when we stepped out into sunshine, I thought of a topic. “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Central Park. It’s not that cold. Did you bring lunch?” She held up a bag. “You can share mine, or we can stop and get you a sandwich.”

  “There’s that deli on Madison,” I said.

  More silence as we walked to the deli.

  I found another topic. “So who is that guy?” I asked, just as Jaya started to speak.

  She’d been saying, “So how’s the research,” but she stopped and said instead, “Who, Francis Chu? He’s one of the repository pages. You’d like him. He plays all these crazy instruments. He can play like three at once.”

  “That sounds cool. But I meant the guy upstairs—the snooty one with the English accent who’s always glaring at me.”

  Jaya laughed. “Oh, that’s Simon. He’s not that bad! He’s a guest page from the Burton Repository in London. I guess he does sound a little snooty, but that’s mostly the accent. He’s perfectly friendly . . . if anything, too friendly. That accent is really cute!”

  The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t place it. “He’s friendly to you, maybe,” I said. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like me.”

  “Well, he doesn’t know you yet.”

  We reached the deli and I held the door open for her. Abigail was there, buying a yogurt. “Oh, good, you found each other,” she said.

  “Yeah, we’re heading to the park to eat lunch,” said Jaya. “Want to join us?”

  “Sure,” said Abigail.

  Yow! The pleasure went pouring out of me. I felt like a little kid who drops his ice-cream cone. Had I bored Jaya so much already that she regretted asking me to lunch?

  I bought a smoked turkey sandwich, orange juice, and an apple and followed the girls out of the deli.

  • • •

  We sat on a bench near the edge of the park, with Jaya in the middle. It was warm for October, but windy.

  “So you guys work at the repository, right? What do you do there?” I asked.

  “We’re pages,” said Abigail. “At least, I’m a page. Jaya’s the head page.”

  “What do pages do?” I asked.

  “A little of everything,” said Jaya. “When you request something from the stacks, we go find it. When you’re done with it, we pack it up and reshelve it. If you break it, we fix it. And if you fall asleep in the Main Exam Room, we wake you up at closing time.”

  “The head page has the hardest job,” said Abigail. “She tells all us other pages we’re doing everything wrong.”

  “I do not!” said Jaya.

  “You do so, Miss Bossypants.”

  “Are you talking about that time with the ice-cream spoons? Because if you don’t wrap them up all the way, they tarnish.”

  “Yes, and the time with the aardvark cage, and the time with the quetzal feathers, and the time with the zither . . .”

  “All right, all right! Maybe I do. Do I really? Am I too hard on you guys?”

  “It’s okay, Jaya—I’m just teasing. I want you to tell me when I’m messing up. I would hate to ruin a perfectly good zither.”

  Silence fell again, broken only by chewing. This is way too awkward, I thought. She’ll never want to have lunch with me again. Better start a more interesting conversation.

  “If you had a time machine, where would you go?” I asked. “I mean when? Where and when?”

  “Is this an essay question?” Abigail asked.

  “No, I was thinking about time travel for my science fair project.”

  “I thought you were doing your project on robots,” said Jaya. She sounded suspicious. Did she know about the time machine after all?

  “I am,” I said. “I decided time travel would be too hard. But I’m still interested. What do you know about time travel?”

  Jaya shrugged. Her hat bobbed. “That it shows up in a lot of cheesy movies about knights trying to joust with trucks.”

  “I would totally kill for a time machine,” said Abigail. “I’d use it to go forward a few millennia and see how they end up solving the climate-change problem.”

  “What if they don’t solve it?” I asked. “What if the whole planet’s a post-nuclear wasteland?”

  “Why would it be? Global warming isn’t the same thing as nuclear war,” objected Jaya.

  “Oh, there’ll be plenty of war. When the oil starts running out, they’ll fight over what’s left. And food and land and clean water. Maybe they’ll fight over your time machine so they can go back to the past before all the wars start,” I said.

  “Okay, so where would you go?”

  I chewed my sandwich and thought about it. “I’d like to meet Leonardo da Vinci,” I said.

  “Me too,” said Jaya. “Leonardo rocks. Or dinosaurs. Don’t you want to see what colors they were?”

  “Sure, from a distance,” I said. Could that be how the stained-glass designer figured out what colors to make the dinosaurs in the Main Exam Room windows? Did they use a time machine?

  “Shakespeare,” said Abigail. “I’d go see the premiere of Hamlet. No, I know—I’d go hear Jesus preach.”

  “That would be awesome,” said Jaya. “I bet he was a great speaker. But would you understand him? Do you know Hebrew?”

  “Not Hebrew, Aramaic. That’s what he spoke. I would learn it before I went.”

  “Would you warn him about Judas?” Jaya asked.

  Abigail shook her head. “Don’t you think he already knew?”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” said Jaya.

  I got out my multi-utility tool and used the medium blade to core my apple and slice it into eighths. I held out the slices.

  “Fancy knifework! Thanks,” said Jaya, taking one. “I would go meet Marie Curie. I’d warn her about radiation sickness.”

  “You can’t!” I said. “That would change the past, and who knows what would happen? Maybe if she hadn’t died young, they would have invented nuclear weapons decades sooner.”

  “Yeah, and maybe France would have used them to stop Hitler and World War II would never have happened,” said Jaya. “That would have been a good thing.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe Hitler would have used them on New York and you would never have been born.”

  “Or maybe I’d be born Indian. My family lived in India back then. Maybe they’d still be there.”

  “But you wouldn’t be you. Your
parents might never have met. Or even if they did meet, what if they had a baby a year sooner or a week later? You could have been somebody else. You could have been a boson. You could have been a boy. Who knows who you would have been!”

  “Maybe I would be somebody way better. Maybe I would be just like me, except with perfect teeth.”

  “I like your teeth,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t if you were the one wearing the retainer. Anyway, maybe I would have liked being a boy.”

  “Don’t you like being you?”

  “Of course I do! That’s the point,” said Jaya. “I love being me. Whoever I was, I bet I would love being that person too.”

  “Well, I like you the way you are now,” I said.

  “Aww,” said Abigail.

  “You’re sweet, Leo,” said Jaya. “But how do you know the you in the world where I’m not me isn’t saying the exact same thing to the not-me me right now?”

  “I don’t. But I don’t care what he’s saying because he’s not me. He’s just some other guy saying something to some other girl, who isn’t you. Or maybe he’s a girl and you’re a guy, in which case he’s some other girl saying something to some other guy who isn’t you,” I said. “It has nothing to do with us.”

  Jaya laughed. “Well, okay! I’m glad we got that cleared up,” she said. “I wish I could see it. You’d make an adorable girl, with that curl.” She reached out and tugged at the curl on my forehead. I had never hated that thing so much in my life.

  Abigail laughed too. “So how long have you guys been going out?” she asked.

  “What?” I found myself squeezing my orange juice carton so hard it crumpled. Juice spilled out the straw. “Going out? With Jaya?”

  “Well, you don’t need to sound so horrified about it!” Jaya laughed. She said to Abigail, “We’re not going out. We only met this week.”

  “Oh, sorry,” said Abigail. “I just thought, you know, with the whole lunch thing and how you guys talk to each other.”

  “I’m not horrified! Why would I be horrified? Jaya’s amazing!” I said. I shook the juice off my hands and wiped them on my jeans. So much for clean jeans.

  “That’s okay, Leo.” She patted my arm. “You didn’t hurt my feelings. I know I’m an acquired taste.”

  “That’s for sure,” said Abigail. “But most of us acquire you sooner or later. Come on, let’s go back. My shift starts in a few minutes.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Great Man’s Assistant’s Great-Great-Grandson

  On Sunday night I beat Jake at Gravity Force III four games out of six. “Schist, Leo! What did you do to your controller?” he asked.

  “I just fixed it a little.”

  “Will you fix mine a little too, then?”

  “Sure, as long as you promise not to complain if it makes all your ships fly backward.”

  I couldn’t go to the repository on Tuesday because I had a history test the next morning. I had to ask Sofia to turn down her music so I could study. The trouble with me, she told me, was that I didn’t appreciate the brilliance of a well-made fugue.

  I thought about all the alternate worlds in which I was actually good at tests. According to some physicists, there are zillions and zillions and infinite zillions of universes branching off from each other. Every time anything happens—a leaf falls, say, or a hurricane strikes, or you choose A instead of C as the answer to question 7 on your history test—that causes new worlds to branch off the old one.

  If the physicists are right, there’s a world somewhere in which the Leo passed the Cooper Tech entrance exam. That Leo is probably doing his science fair project on particle physics like Dmitri. Maybe he’ll even win first place with his project—if he’s good at tests, he’s probably good at science projects too. But he never met Ms. Kang, and she never told him about the repository.

  There’s another world in which my dad took that job he was offered five years ago out in Silicon Valley. The Leo in that world is the son of a zillionaire now. He has his own workshop in the family compound, with lemon trees out his window. But he never set foot in the repository either, and he never met Jaya.

  There’s another world where Leo doesn’t get visions like I do. He can’t fix things or invent stuff. I don’t know what that Leo likes to do instead—maybe he plays hockey. Hockey Leo is probably more popular than me, especially if he makes a lot of goals. But he didn’t even try to enter the science fair, and he never saw the time machine.

  Okay, so I probably didn’t do as well on my history test as some of the other Leos in other universes. But it isn’t actually so bad being this Leo, in this universe.

  • • •

  I went back to the repository after school on Wednesday. I decided to check out the later robots—the ones listed under robot in the catalog. I copied out the call number for the earliest one I could find: a 1921 robotic servant from a Czech company called Rossum’s Universal Robots.

  In the Main Exam Room, under those glowing windows, Jaya was working with the pneumatic tubes. She waved at me.

  Simon was at the desk. I handed him my call slips. He put the first two in a tube and passed it to Jaya, but he gave me back the call slip for the Czech robot.

  “Sorry,” he said, not actually sounding very sorry at all. “This item is in one of the Special Collections. You need permission from a supervisor to examine it.”

  “Okay. How do I get permission?”

  He sighed, like I was asking him to do a huge favor instead of his job. “I’ll have to send a request to a supervisor.”

  “Can you do that, then, please?”

  “Can I see your card?”

  “It hasn’t arrived yet,” I said. “I just applied for it last week.”

  “Well, come back when you’ve got it. Next, please.” And he turned to the person behind me on line.

  “Hang on, Simon,” said Jaya. “Leo, can I see that call slip?”

  I handed it to her and she scrutinized it. “I’ll take it downstairs to Dr. Rust when the shifts change,” she said.

  An hour later she came over to the table where I was working.

  “I’m sorry, Leo,” Jaya said. “That Rossum’s robot is restricted access and Dr. Rust isn’t willing to make an exception. You can try again after you get your card. Doc will want to talk to you first, though.”

  “Okay. Thanks for trying. But how come . . .”

  “How come what?”

  “Well, what’s so special about that particular robot? They let me handle the Leonardo da Vinci knight. That one must be incredibly rare! Why is this one restricted when that one isn’t?”

  “Oh, well, the Rossum’s robot . . .” Jaya paused, as if trying to decide what to say. “It’s in a Special Collection, that’s all. Some of the collections have restrictions because . . . because of the way the repository categorizes things.”

  “I see,” I said, although I didn’t. “Well, thanks for asking.”

  • • •

  On Saturday, I took my lunch with me to the repository. When my stomach started growling, I put my robots on the reserve shelf and went to the park to look for Jaya.

  She was sitting on the same bench, this time with Simon and the page I’d seen at the front desk. “Leo!” she called when she saw me. “Come join us!” She scooted over to make room.

  “Hi, Jaya,” I said, sitting down. It was exciting to be so close to her. Our arms touched.

  “You know Simon and Francis, right? No? This is Leo. He’s doing a project on robots. Leo, this is Simon FitzHenry and Francis Chu. So how’s it going with the robots?” asked Jaya.

  “It’s interesting. The repository has a great collection. Some of them are thousands of years old! But most of the old ones aren’t exactly what I would call robots.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Francis.

  “Well, a lot of them are really just hyped-up windup toys. I mean, the mechanisms are amazingly clever sometimes, but they only do one thing. Once you wind them up
or get the hydraulics going, they just do whatever they were built to do—pour out soup or wash the floor or whatever.”

  “What’s wrong with that? Shouldn’t they do what they’re built to do?” said Simon.

  “Yes, but a real robot would do more.”

  “Like what?” asked Francis.

  “Respond to directions, at least. Ideally, it would be able to make some decisions for itself,” I answered.

  “I see what you mean,” said Jaya. “If a windup floor washer counts as a robot, then your dishwasher is a robot too.”

  “I wish our dishwasher was a robot,” said Francis. “Our dishwasher is me.”

  Jaya laughed. “I always thought there was something a little robotic about your eyebrows.”

  Francis wiggled his eyebrows rhythmically.

  Simon said, “The repository has the earliest remote-controlled robot ever made. That should fit your definition. My great-great-grandfather helped to invent it.”

  “What? Really?” said Jaya. “Was your great-great-grandfather an inventor?”

  “Yes. He worked in Nikola Tesla’s lab.”

  “Nikola Tesla? The guy who invented AC electric engines and the radio?” asked Jaya.

  “That’s right,” said Simon.

  “So your great-great-grandfather invented a remote-controlled robot?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Simon. “That is, Tesla always gets the credit for inventing it, but my great-great-grandfather did most of the heavy lifting.”

  “But wasn’t Tesla from Eastern Europe?” objected Francis. “I thought your family was English. Didn’t you tell us you were descended from some king of England?”

  “That’s on my father’s side,” said Simon. “Tesla had a lab in New York. My mother’s great-grandfather worked there. My father’s family is descended from Henry VIII—hence our name, FitzHenry.”

  “That’s the one who kept beheading all his wives, right?” asked Jaya.

  Francis snorted. “You do look a little like Henry VIII, Simon, except much thinner and without the turkey leg,” he said.

  Simon clenched his jaw and glared. I could easily imagine him beheading wives.

  “So if your great-great-great-grandfather or whatever was Henry VIII, why aren’t you the king of England?” I asked him.