Наталья Соколова – LIMBO (страница 12)

I slid off the bed – practically fell – and rushed to my mobile phone. I need to call the police immediately. No, better directly the FSB! Let them take him to their Highest Enforcement Lawkeeper League!

"FSB Russia helpline," a stern female voice stated crisply, without a hint of sleepiness despite the late hour. "Please identify yourself. Which city are you calling from?"

"Hello," everything inside me was trembling. "I'm calling from St. Petersburg, my name is Niki. Nicole. I study at an institute, and recently, before my eyes… before my eyes, a professor committed murder!"

"You're studying at LIMBO?" this question sounded more like a statement. "First year?"

It seemed the speaker quickly accessed a database and saw me on the student list. Or maybe, after today's shooting in the assembly hall, my call was far from being the first?..

"Hello? Miss Antipova? Can you hear me?"

Well, now she even knew my surname, though I hadn't mentioned it.

"Yes," I breathed weakly, answering all questions at once.

"I understand. For all issues related to the activities of your educational organization, you should address the rector of the institute or the curator of your cohort directly."

"Wait! This isn't what you think! I'm talking about the murder of a human! A living human, do you understand?!"

"Thank you for your call. Have a good day," the operator interrupted me with a rehearsed phrase.

The call ended. Damn it! I fell into the chair by the desk and buried my face in my open palms. She wouldn't even listen! What am I supposed to do now?!

After crying it out, I opened my messenger and wrote to Liz:

"Sorry it's late. Do you know who our cohort curator is?"

"We don't have one yet," the answer came immediately. "They'll appoint someone any day now. Why?"

"Oh, nothing serious."

"Some urgent matter?"

"No, it's okay. How's your car?" I hastened to change the subject. "Is it being repaired?"

"Just routine maintenance, but thanks for asking, birdie. Now you can sleep soundly."

Putting the phone down, I suddenly felt that I had indeed calmed down a bit. There was something in Lizzy's words that set her apart from an ordinary, simple girl. Some invisible but tangible force that gave weight to any phrase she uttered.

Soon my eyes began to close on their own, and I didn't notice how I fell asleep.

I disliked the History professor right away. A nervous man with a flushed bald head, an enormous belly, and tiny, greasy eyes. Sloppy, with a nasty, squeaky voice and no less nasty character.

His classroom turned out to be one of the most boring. Dusty empty shelves, a dull board smeared with wet traces of unerased chalk, a strange damp smell, and a lonely pot with a dried-up plant standing forlornly on the windowsill – that was the entire interior. The only notable feature was a huge antique clock towering above the entrance door. The minute hand ended with a serpent's head, and the hour hand with a half-open beak of a tongue-sticking bird. The second hand, curved in waves, moved across the dial with a creaking and sharp, annoying ticking.

Judging by his disgustedly pursed thin lips, the historian didn't consider students respectable people, so he didn't even bother to say hello. Slapping the gradebook on the lectern, instead of a greeting, he tediously drawled:

"The current time is 8 hours 59 minutes 2 seconds, and right now I consider it my duty to remind you that those who dare to be late to my class will, following my good old tradition, receive five F grades in a row!"

Yeah, a good tradition, indeed. I looked at the empty seat next to me and clicked my tongue regretfully. Jake would get in trouble again.

"Three such late arrivals per semester – and you're expelled," the professor's piggy little eyes kept checking with the second hand of the clock. "This isn't my whim, but natural selection! You won't have time to correct fifteen F grades before the exam session, no matter how hard you try. Yes, yes, and don't tell me later that it's because my lesson is the first on Fridays! Time is not garbage to be scattered about in minutes and seconds like that. And if you waste the time allotted to you, then be ready to end up in the dump yourself at the end of the semester!.."

The minute and second hands met at 12. The bell rang.

"So, let's begin. In my classes, we will learn to control time," standing up, the professor began drawing coordinate axes on the green board with a squeaky piece of chalk. "Time, I want you to note this right away, is not continuous, but discrete. Each fragment of time is not a point, as previously thought, but a segment. These segments connect the past with the present – these are the so-called wormholes. And you, my little worms, will have to learn to crawl through them…"

"I apologize!" the classroom door swung open, and a breathless Jake tumbled in.

My gaze automatically slid over the wall clock. 9:01 – and five more seconds extra. Anticipating the dressing-down that the time-obsessed historian was about to give my classmate, I squeezed my eyes shut.

"And right now I consider it my duty to remind you that those who dare to be late to my class will, following my good old tradition, receive five F grades in a row!" the professor suddenly spoke, as if on a recording, with the same rattling, belittling intonation as a couple of minutes ago.

The board was empty. The historian was sitting at the desk again and continuing to say what we had already heard, while Jake, squinting, leaned against the doorframe and touched his temple as if he suddenly had a migraine. Or more precisely, déjà vu?..

"…and if you waste the time allotted to you, then be ready to end up in the dump yourself at the end of the semester!" the professor paused, waiting for the bell to finish ringing. He looked at Jake, and then, once again, at the clock. "Young man, congratulations, you have the honor of being the first candidate for recycling. The current time is 9 hours 00 minutes and 11 seconds. You're late. State your surname."

Jake did not answer. His already narrow cat-like pupils just narrowed even more.

As if mesmerized, I watched the second hand of the clock, which, after stopping for a while, was now crawling in the opposite direction. First slowly, then faster. Sometimes smoothly, as if through butter, sometimes in fits – jumping through several marks at once.

Exhaling heavily, Jake plopped down next to me at the desk:

"Whew! Barely made it!.." he pulled a thick ring-bound notebook out of his backpack, opened it, and clicked his automatic pen. "Mr. Zauberstein, sorry for interrupting! Please continue."

Laughter erupted from the back rows.

The professor shifted his gaze from the face of the impudent student to the clock and, with slight surprise at his own words, enunciated:

"Be that as it may, the current time is 8 hours 59 minutes 2 seconds, and right now I consider it my duty to remind you that those who dare to be late to my class…"

I wasn't interested in listening to him for the third time. Leaning towards Jake's ear, I whispered:

"Gill, what's going on?!"

"You again, you snake?!" Liz exclaimed along with me, pushing him in the back from behind. "You promised not to do this anymore! My head is splitting from your tricks!"

"My own head is splitting," Jake snapped back, jerking his shoulder. "You know I don't do it on purpose…"

"Yeah, sure! You just didn't want those five F-s!.."

The bell rang for the third time. The unsuspecting clock once again showed exactly nine o'clock.

"It started when I was fourteen…" Jake explained in a whisper. "Time obeys the element of water, so it's usually easy as pie for serpents to control it. Same with me – I go to sleep, and the timeline unfolds at a different angle, in another dimension, turns into a point where the past, present, and future are connected into one. You can crumple time into a ball, like plasticine, or stretch it out like chewing gum."

"Young man! Your talking is interrupting my lesson and holding up the entire group! State your surname!"

The second hand jerked again and jumped back. The bell rang. This time somewhat hoarsely. Probably already tired.

"At first I could only do it in my dreams," Jake continued imperturbably. "All the guys were already having erotic dreams – while I was being tossed through wormholes. And tossed mercilessly – waking up, I couldn't immediately remember which century it was, or even which era. Instead of an alarm clock, I still have a flip calendar on my nightstand that shows not only the date and month, but also the year."

"Young man, you…"

The clock hands, jumping back to 9:00, completely froze. Only the second hand trembled slightly, trying to move.

"And that's just the beginning," Jake sighed, looking at the dial along with me. "Now if I don't get enough sleep, then attacks happen in reality too. It throws me either into the past or into the future. When I surface – I always say some kind of nonsense. Like with you when we first met. Or now with the historian. Well, why did I blurt out that 'Please continue' to him!.."

"Come on, enough already! You picked the worst class to stretch out!" Liz hissed from behind. "I don't want to see this swine for an extra five minutes! Hey, you hear me?! Better fast-forward to 10:30!"