"Went to the drug store for you, did he?" Gran said. "That was nice of him. I've been sicker before—you'd better believe I have. Why, I remember a couple of times.. . ." And she was off. She never got tired of talking about her ailments, and she didn't realize how sick she'd been here. She was lucky, or it looked that way to Beckie.
Once Gran got going, you didn't have to listen to her. She was her own best company. Beckie talked under her drone: "Will you please answer my question? How come you've got this medicine before the hospitals do?"
"It's a secret," Justin said unhappily. "You really shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth."
Listening to Gran, looking at her, told Beckie he had a point, and a good one. She was reviving right before their eyes. It was amazing to watch. Even so, Beckie said, "I want to know. I won't blab, honest. You know me pretty well by now. Do I break promises?"
Somebody knocked on the door. It was room service, with a tray for Gran. When Beckie found she was out of Virginia cash, Justin tipped the black man who brought it. He touched the brim of his cap with a forefinger. "Thank you kindly, suh," he said, and withdrew.
Gran started eating soft-boiled eggs as if she thought they'd be outlawed tomorrow. Sadly, Justin said, "I wonder what that waiter was really thinking about us. Nothing good, that's for sure."
Even though Beckie had wondered the same thing, hearing it from a Virginian was strange. She wanted to ask Justin about that, too. One thing at a time, she told herself. "Do I break promises?" she asked again.
"Nooo," he admitted, sounding as if he didn't want to. "Okay, then. Here." He reached into his pocket and pulled out something—a folded envelope. "Hang on to this. Don't open it till you get back home to California. Promise?"
"I promise," she said, and put it in her purse. "What do I do with it then?"
"That's the other half of the promise," Justin answered. "Look at it. Keep it. But don't do anything else with it. These are . . . good-bye promises, I guess you'd say. All right?"
"All right," Beckie said firmly. But then, not so firmly, she went on, "Good-bye promises?"
"Afraid so." Justin nodded. "Doesn't look like we're going to stick around here much longer."
"You're going back to Fredericksburg? You can do that?" Beckie asked.
"Sure. We're going back to Fredericksburg." Justin was lying through his teeth. Beckie knew it. She also knew he wanted her to know it. But before she could ask him any questions, he wagged a finger at her. "Don't. Don't even start, okay? This has to do with your promises. I can't tell you how, but you'll understand better—a little better, anyway—when you open the envelope."
Naturally, that made her want to open it right away. But she was somebody who kept promises, so she nodded and said, "I can hardly wait."
He smiled. She got the feeling she'd passed a test. "I'd better go," he said. "I'm awful glad the medicine worked so well for your grandmother. And ..." He smiled a crooked smile and shook his head. "Nah. Even if things were different, I don't suppose it would have worked out."
"Neither do I, not really," Beckie said. "But even so, since you're going . . ." She took a step forward. So did Justin. Afterwards, she never did figure out who kissed whom first. His arms were tight around her, but not too tight. They felt good.
Behind her, Gran coughed.
Beckie pulled away just long enough to say, "Oh, hush," and went back to what she was doing. Finally, it was done. She took a deep breath. Then she asked, "Will I ever see you again?"
"Maybe. You never know for sure," Justin said. "But I wouldn't bet on it."
She nodded. "That's about what I thought. Take care of yourself... in Fredericksburg."
Justin's smile said he noticed the little pause and knew what it meant. "Thanks. You, too, when you get back to L.A. I don't think the war here will last a whole lot longer. You'll be able to go through quarantine or whatever and head for home. And now"—he bobbed his head, suddenly and surprisingly shy again—"so long." Faster than Beckie expected, he opened the door and was gone.
"So long." She hoped he heard it before the closing door cut it off. But she was never sure about that afterwards, either.
"The boy," Gran said, "he's a nice enough boy."
Beckie sighed. "More than nice enough," she said.
Down in the subbasement, Justin and his mother and Mr. Brooks waited for the transposition chamber. "Home!" Mom said. But it wouldn't be home, not yet. It would be a stretch in the quarantine alternate, while they and the chamber that carried them there got cleaned out. It wouldn't be much fun, but almost anything was better than staying in battered Charleston.
Mr. Brooks set a hand on Justin's shoulder. "Way to go," he said. "I'm not kidding, not even a little bit. You nudged Crosstime Traffic into doing things it didn't want to do, and that's not easy. If you hadn't, no telling how long we would've been stuck here, or whether they ever would have let us get away from this alternate."
"I couldn't get them to bend, that's for sure," Justin's mother said.
"You didn't think you'd be able to when you started," Mr. Brooks told her. "You settled for no. Justin didn't want to hear it, and he kept after them till he got what he did want. If you aim to get anywhere, that's what you need to do."
"I just want to get back to the home timeline," Justin said.
"Well, we'll only be one stop away," said Mr. Brooks. "And you won't have anybody shooting at you while you wait."
A few days earlier, it would have been a joke, and a tasteless joke at that. Now Justin understood how wonderful not getting shot at was. Most of the people of Charleston, white and black, probably appreciated it by now.
Silently and without any fuss, the transposition chamber appeared. The door slid open. Justin and his mother and Mr. Brooks got in. Justin expected the chamber to be on full remote control, the way the one that brought the antiviral for Beckie's grandmother was. But it had a human operator. Not only that, the man was smiling.
"Don't you know you're going into quarantine?" Justin asked.
"I know I'm going on vacation," the operator answered. "I'm a birder, and I'll be able to see things I never could back home." On the seat beside him were binoculars, spotting scope, camera, and two books: Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America and Guide to North American Birds Extinct in the Home Timeline. He was ready for what he'd be doing in the quarantine alternate, all right.
Mr. Brooks laughed. "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."
"No." The chamber operator shook his head. "Close, but not quite. When you want lemonade, go out and pick lemons. I volunteered for this run."
"I bet you didn't have much competition," Justin's mother said.
"Not a whole lot," the operator agreed. "But when I get back with my photos and the new birds on my life list, plenty of people will be jealous. Unless you're able to get out to the alternates, you'll never see these birds. Crosstime Traffic ought to run birding safaris into some of these alternates. Lots of people would pay to go."
"Don't tell us. Tell the company," Mr. Brooks said as the doors slid shut. "If they take you up on it, you'll get a suggestion bonus."
"Maybe," the operator said. Some of the lights on the board in front of him went from red to green. "Well, we're on our way." He came back to what Mr. Brooks said: "They might try to take the idea and do me out of the bonus. That would help their bottom line. But maybe not. You never can tell."
As usual, nothing seemed to happen in the chamber. Justin tried to guess how much subjective time they would need to get where they were going. However long it seemed, the sun wouldn't have moved in the sky from when they left here to when they got here. Ever since travel between alternates began, chronophysicists had been wrangling about the difference between time and duration. Justin didn't have the math to follow the argument in detail. One of these days, maybe, he thought.