Living in America, part 4
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
2003
Rebecca awoke at what she was sure was an unseemly hour to a slight pain in her side. She tried to ignore it, but dull though it was, it was amazingly persistent; after half an hour of simply trying to get back to sleep, she got up. Perhaps a short walk and a glass of water would help, and even if it didn’t, it was better than lying there and getting frustrated over all the sleep she wasn’t getting.
On her way back from the bathroom, she noticed that the light in Claudia’s room was on, shining around the gaps in her door. It struck her as odd - Claudia wasn’t usually one to burn the midnight oil on a school night - and she was no closer to sleep, so she knocked.
“What?”
“Shouldn’t you be asleep by now, Claudia?”
“Can’t sleep, dreams will eat me.” Claudia opened the door; she looked every bit as tired as Rebecca had suspected. “Besides, I could say the same thing about you.”
“Oh, but I’ve already had some sleep tonight.” It wasn’t enough, but that wasn’t the important bit. “And I’d venture a guess that you haven’t even tried.”
“I’m trying not to, is the thing. See also: dreams will eat me.” Claudia sat down on her bed, and poked a button on her laptop. “So I’m going to deliberately get lost in a maze of links on Snopes until I pass out and deal with the sleep dep at school tomorrow. I’ve done it before, I’ll live.”
Rebecca frowned, and helped herself to Claudia’s desk chair. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s my birthday. Same thing as every year.”
“Well, I haven’t seen your birthday in action before, and it certainly seemed pleasant enough for you at dinner. Enlighten me.”
Claudia sighed, though she did close her computer. “Every year since I was ten - well, I guess eleven - I’ve had a dream about Joshua. It’ll be the same deal in a couple months. Sometimes I have ‘em at Christmas too, but just once I’d like to get through my birthday or the anniversary of...” She screwed her eyes shut, and when she resumed her sentence, it wasn’t where she’d left off. “Without having to deal with the memories, you know?”
“I can imagine.” Rebecca’s memories of the worst of the Warehouse didn’t keep her awake nearly as often as they’d used to, but she still knew the feeling. “Claudia... I realise this is a sensitive topic, but - what exactly happened to your brother?”
“Like I said at Thanksgiving. His master’s thesis went horribly wrong. He was trying to teleport and--” Claudia drew a deep, shaky breath. “I remember asking him when he picked the topic, people can’t teleport now, what made him think anyone could pull it off in the 1500s?”
Rebecca raised an eyebrow; this was ringing more bells than ever, but she couldn’t be sure yet. “Renaissance-era teleportation? He certainly would have had my attention with that proposal. Why did he think it would work?”
“Mostly because he was sure his advisor wouldn’t steer him wrong on something like that. So anyway, his advisor gave him this medieval dude’s compass thing, and Joshua spent close to a year and a half working out this nasty-ass differential equation to go with it, and... well. I guess you could say it worked.”
“And you haven’t seen nor heard from him since.”
Claudia nodded, a few tears escaping her despite her best efforts to the contrary. “Unless the weird dream sequences count, but I’m not really convinced they do. But at the same time - you know in mysteries and stuff, where someone disappears and everyone assumes they’re dead even if there’s no body?”
“I’m familiar.”
“I don’t want to do that. I mean, I know he probably is, but... he’s my brother. I can’t just turn my back on that.”
“Nor do I think you should.” Rebecca stood, and added, “I think it’s time for me to get back to sleep. You do what you need to, but if you get in trouble for sleeping through class tomorrow, you’re on your own.”
Claudia shrugged. “I got Mountain Dew. I’ll make it work one way or another. And... thanks. For listening.”
“Of course.”
Rebecca closed Claudia’s door - in counterpoint to Claudia opening her laptop, she suspected - and went back to bed; as she got back in, Jack stirred.
“‘s wrong, Becks?”
“Nothing, dear. Go back to sleep.”
“Why’re you up if nothing’s wrong?”
Rebecca sighed. “It’s far too late to get into it, Jack. I’ll explain in the morning. Go back to sleep.”
“All right, but I’m holding you to that.” Jack rolled over, and was snoring again in short order, as usual. Fortunately, the short walk had served enough of its purpose that Rebecca got back to sleep herself before she grew too exasperated.
She ended up explaining it the next afternoon, over what Jack intended to be his only cigarette break of the day. The further she got into what Claudia had told her, the more Jack frowned, which assured Rebecca she was right to wonder about the situation.
“It’s an Artifact,” he said, after she finished. “Couldn’t tell you how her brother’s professor got his hands on one, but I’d bet that’s what it is. It might even explain her dreams. Did she mention whose compass it was, by any chance?”
“That didn’t come up, but she did say it was made in the 1500s, which would narrow the field down considerably more than what we’ve worked with before.” A series of thumps in the front of the house - through the front door and up the stairs - told Rebecca that Claudia was back from school.
“It does, but probably not enough to go forward with just that. And here I thought I’d never miss that damned library. Of course, if they’ve digitized the card catalog by now, that would help tremendously--”
Another, larger thump over their heads cut Jack off before he could finish. For all he’d been complaining about his knees of late, he still bolted back inside and took the stairs two at a time; Rebecca hadn’t seen him move that fast in years. By the time she joined them in Claudia’s room, he was already asking Claudia what had happened.
“I... it’s been a weird day,” Claudia said, “and - I don’t know, I thought if I got out one of Joshua’s books it would help some, but then this was in it.”
Rebecca nearly tripped over the book in question, apparently the source of the noise that brought them upstairs; it was a thick leather-bound volume, one of several in Claudia’s collection that she hadn’t paid much mind to before. When she picked it up, it fell open to a drawing of a compass.
“And it wasn’t there before?” Jack said.
“No, there’s no reason it would have been, and I sure as hell don’t remember seeing it before. But - that’s Joshua’s handwriting.”
“You might want to take a look at this,” Rebecca said - in stereo with Jack, as it happened, so she traded him the book for the scrap of paper that had troubled Claudia so much. It had clearly been left in a hurry, and had a simple message: get me out of here, claud.
“Claudia? You know how you said last night that you didn’t want to give up so long as there wasn’t a body to point to?”
“Yeah?”
Rebecca glanced at the book again. “I think you might have been on to something.”
Warehouse 13, South Dakota
1961
Rebecca wasn’t sure what she and Jack had done to get nearly a week off from field work - though she suspected it had something to do with Jack’s sprained ankle - but she wasn’t inclined to argue. She had quite the backlog of case reports to get through, and plans to call Tom after dinner.
Some of her coworkers thought she’d wasted her ability to share the true nature of the Warehouse with one person on her brother. But as Rebecca saw it, there was no one better. She and Tom had always been close, so he would work out sooner or later that she wasn’t telling him the whole story. Besides, she had every intention of getting out of this line of work before it could kill her; if she ended up marrying anyone, she wouldn’t need to keep her job a secret from them.
“Rebecca?”
Rebecca looked up from her last case report, and smiled. “Hi, Phyllis. How can I help you today?”
“Something interesting came up on the Lovelace last night. If you and Jack wanted to take it, he should be better by the time you have all the groundwork done.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come along on a case? You have an eye for this stuff.”
Phyllis shook her head. “Oh, no. I like the desk work and I love the Lovelace - there’s nothing like it in the world, I’m sure - but I’d be a mess in the field. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Some days, I wonder that myself. What did you find?”
Phyllis set a pile of papers on Rebecca’s desk, a combination of newspaper clippings, handwritten notes and information she’d pulled off of the Lovelace mainframe. “There’s something odd going on in Green Bay,” she said. “A second secretary with a magazine there turned up dead the other day - the first was over a week ago. It’s been back-page news for a reason that I think makes it our business.”
Rebecca picked up one of the newspaper clippings. “‘Ruth Van Doren, a secretary with Where and When magazine, was found in her apartment this morning, apparently’... turned to glass?”
“Well, according to the police report, there was a shattered glass statue in her kitchenette with her likeness and no trace of her anywhere else. They can’t make heads or tails of it, but they felt they had to assume she was dead.”
“I can see why they tucked it away in the back. My God. Who would do such a thing?”
Phyllis shrugged. “That’s for someone else to figure out, but I can tell you that both of these poor women worked closely with the same editor.” She pulled one of the Lovelace pages to the front and tapped on a name.
“That’s not always enough to make a case, but it certainly makes him a person of interest. Either way, whatever’s causing this needs to be taken out of circulation. Thank you, Phyllis.”
“You’re welcome. And good luck.”
She left the papers on Rebecca’s desk and headed off, presumably to more work on the Lovelace; Rebecca pushed it aside in order to regain her momentum on the case report. She had just reached the bit where Jack hurt himself when her partner shuffled in, all but collapsed into his chair and lit a cigarette.
“The delicate flower returns to work, I see,” she said, without looking away from her work.
“Hey, I have an injury here, Becks.”
“You sprained your ankle, which I can tell you from experience is hardly the end of the world - and I’m still wondering how you pulled that off when I’m the one running in high heels all the time. If it’s still bothering you, it’s probably because you didn’t take care of it properly.”
“So... what are you saying,” Jack said, “I should get a pair of heels for next time?”
Despite herself, Rebecca nearly pulled a muscle trying not to laugh at the mental image. “Definitely not. You’d probably hurt yourself worse, and then I’d never hear the end of it. Anyway, since you couldn’t be bothered to write any case reports during your convalescence--”
“Last time I did a case report, you told me my handwriting was a disaster and not to do it again!”
“--you can have a look at this instead,” Rebecca said, dumping the papers Phyllis had given her on Jack’s desk. “And when I’m done writing about your humiliation in the pursuit of Buddy Holly’s glasses, I’m going to go have dinner and call my brother.”
“Do you really have to include that part? What is all this stuff, anyway?”
“Phyllis found us a case. You work on how to talk Charlie into not assigning us to something else, and tomorrow I’ll start making the arrangements in Green Bay. And yes, I do have to include that part. We would have had the things that much sooner if you hadn’t tripped.”
Jack sighed. “You’re making me look bad, Becks.”
“Then write the case report yourself, next time.” Rebecca turned back to her own work, ignoring Jack’s protests; when she was finished, she dropped the pile of case reports on Charlie’s desk and headed out.
She treated herself to a leisurely dinner at the town diner - after all, she’d just turned out six case reports in one day - and still got back to the B&B in ample time to lay first claim to the phone for the evening. She was beginning to suspect she needed the conversation more than she’d thought; it had been a while since she’d had the chance. And sure enough, just the sound of the phone ringing on the other end of the line helped her relax considerably.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Tom. Sorry I didn’t call last week, something came up.”
Tom laughed. “If it weren’t one thing, it would be six, in your job. What kind of thing was it this time?”
“Buddy Holly’s glasses, believe it or not. And Jack sprained his ankle in the process. He’s been so unnecessarily dramatic about it. But on the bright side, we haven’t been back in the field since, so I got to catch up on my paperwork.”
“Rebecca, I love you, but I don’t know why you think paperwork is the bright side to anything.”
“That’s because you’ve never actually tried this job.” It was just as well, Rebecca thought; Tom was far more of a homebody by nature than she was. He wouldn’t care for the constant traveling, to say nothing of his girlfriend. “How’s life in Minneapolis?”
“Good. The new job’s treating me well, and Sheila... well, if they won’t give you a day off for your brother’s wedding, I’ll be quite upset. Assuming she says yes when I ask her, of course.”
Rebecca grinned. “Oh, Tom, good luck. When are you asking?”
“Wednesday. I’m taking her out to dinner.”
“Well, I don’t know if I’ll be able to call next Sunday - we’ve got a probable case in Green Bay, and I don’t know if we’ll be there over the weekend - but I’ll check up as soon as I can.”
“Thanks.” There was a faint rattling on the other end of the line, and Tom swore. “Sorry, I - late dinner, my pasta’s boiling over. Be careful, Rebecca.”
“I always am. I’ll talk to you later, Tom.”
“‘Bye.” Tom hung up, and Rebecca laughed as she did the same, leaving the phone free for anyone else who had someone to call.
Over the course of the next week, she and Jack made the arrangements to get to Green Bay and look into this glass-girl business. Phyllis didn’t turn up any new stories about mysterious glass statues, but Rebecca couldn’t take that as much comfort; whoever and whatever was behind this wasn’t necessarily done. She wouldn’t be able to let it go until she could be sure the Artifact wasn’t causing trouble anymore.
On Monday of the week following Phyllis’ discovery - and Tom’s successful engagement, as things worked out - Rebecca set up shop at her desk at ten of nine, just in case they needed the extra time to get the final details squared away. Much to her surprise, Jack wasn’t far behind, despite the number of times he’d protested he wasn’t a morning person; he sat down at his own desk, lit a cigarette, and