Shipbuilder Read Online Free PDF Page B

along.”
    Casey just raised her eyebrows, and he answered, “Look for work as a physicist. It’s what I know how to do, even in this day and age.”
    She nodded, a little smile tugging at her lips. “What about documentation? Sure, you can tell people you lost all your papers in a fire, but they’ll want to know why you can’t write to Stanford and have them send you a copy.”
    He laughed. “One reason would be that Stanford was not in operation in 1872, which would be the year I got my PhD.”
    “Oh.” She laughed with him. “Maybe you went to Cambridge or something?”
    He gave it some thought, then asked her, “Do you think it’s possible to have someone counterfeit a degree?”
    “We’re going to be regular criminals?”
    “Just the bare minimum. I don’t like it either, you know.”
    She leaned back in the chair, her legs extended and hands folded over her stomach, the pose incongruous with the Edwardian clothes she wore, as she considered their plight. “I suppose I could live with the ethical quandary, but let’s be practical. How do we find someone who knows how to do that kind of thing? And how do we pay them?”
    He looked helpless. “Damned if I know.”
    “Could Queen’s test you and give you an honorary degree or something? After all, you have the knowledge and experience. You’re just missing the paperwork.”
    He considered that. “Maybe. Let me think about it.”
    ~~~
    Sam decided to contact Albert Einstein, who was living in Bern at this time. “Einstein,” he told Casey, “has an intuitive grasp of time travel and the paradoxes involved. I’ll go slow, but if I can convince him of what’s happened, any thoughts he has can only help.”
    He sent a letter, writing a little about his research and the practical applications he had been developing. He would have preferred to go to Bern himself, but he felt responsible for Casey, and was unwilling to drag her across Europe with no money and no guarantee Einstein would be able or willing to work with him.
    They talked about Sam working as an “inventor,” creating appliances and technologies they knew would catch on. While this would no doubt make them rich, the obstacles were overwhelming. Even the simplest invention required materials that they could not afford or that did not yet exist, although Casey facetiously suggested he figure out how to invent a better sound system. Her music player no longer worked and she hated how the gramophone mutilated music.
    Casey faced predictable discrimination as she looked for work. She was a girl, thus her options were limited. And like young people everywhere (and evidently in all times) she complained about the catch-22 of how to get experience when all the jobs required experience! But one obstacle came from an unexpected source–her nationality. More than once, a possible employer turned her away with the comment, “there’s plenty o’ Irish out of work. Can’t see my way straight to hirin’ an American who could just go home.”
    ~~~
    It was after just such a rejection a few days later, that Casey, her head down against the wind, hurried across a street, fighting back tears at the shopkeeper’s rude shout and slammed door. She paused at the entrance to an alley, her back to the street, and gave vent to a brief gasp of sorrow and rage. She tried to stop, knowing that red eyes would make people think she was on the morning after. Then she gave up, turned her face to the wall, and wept.
    Someone brushed past her into the alley and she looked up, startled. A man stood farther in, well-dressed, hands in his coat pockets, hat pushed firmly onto his head as he regarded her with a friendly face. She wiped the tears away as she murmured, “excuse me,” and started to turn.
    “Looking for a job?” His voice was mild and she turned back to face him, hope making her voice bright.
    “Yes, I am. Do you have a position open?”
    He tilted his head deeper into the alley and took her arm. “We