“I guess we send it floating down the river?”
Viznir flicks his flashlight beam to the cave wall where the little stream is disappearing into darkness. The sound of splashing beyond the wall suggests the stream must drop off somewhere beyond it.
“We’re never getting it back if you’re wrong.”
I search the cave for any other options, but seeing none, I squat and set the little canoe in the water. I test the weight of the jar of eyeballs in it, then give it a push, letting the current tug it along toward the wall. The little canoe picks up speed and vanishes into the hole. Time seems to slow down as I wait for a result. Viznir’s foot is tapping as he stares into the darkness of the hole. Finally my bracelet beeps. The number on the display blinks the number ten but then beeps again to show a fourteen. I imagine the penalty will affect me later, but for now I’m just happy to be advancing.
The time gate opens against the far wall of the cave, so Viznir and I are obligated to wade through the stream to get to it. I let Viznir lead the way and follow him through the gate. We emerge into a marble hallway half a world away. The two women who greet us are Indian with telltale red dots between dark eyes and are dressed in simple robes with more elaborate red sashes thrown over one shoulder.
“Welcome to Hotel Shanat, gentlemen,” the taller woman says. “Dinner has already begun. I will show you to your rooms so you may dress.” She smiles. Both women bow and lead the way right along the hall. One wall of the hallway is open to expose a lush garden one floor below. The sky is shaded in twilight, but birds are still making music in the handful of trees that stretch above the roof. The building we’re in wraps around the garden with more exposed hallways. A couple of children scamper across the garden laughing, then disappear below us.
The hallway turns right, and we pass a dozen doorways decorated with various animal reliefs before stopping before a door with an elephant on it. The elephant’s trunk extends from the door and forms a handle. The tall woman opens it and hands me the key before gesturing me inside. “You will find all of your dinner attire has been set out for you. Dinner is in the main dining hall, and your attendance is most desired.” She bows again and leads Viznir farther down the hall.
I’m elated at the prospect of a bed for the night and a bathroom with plumbing. The claw foot tub in the bathroom has hot water, and I immediately begin running a bath. I’m already late for dinner, so I move quickly, but I take the time to get scrubbed clean. The razor provided is a straight blade that I determine I’m bound to cut myself with, so I opt to show up scruffy rather than bloody. The clothing that has been left for me is a lightweight linen suit complete with suspenders, brown patent leather shoes, and argyle socks. A bowtie is provided as well, but since I haven’t the foggiest idea how to tie it, I stuff that in the pocket of my jacket and head out the door.
I pause in the hall, remembering Milo’s instructions. Going back inside, I search the writing desk near the window for paper. The pen at the desk is an elaborate fountain pen with a brass nib. I opt for my own and try to formulate what to say. How do you tell a time traveler she’s in danger without anyone else knowing? I frown at the blank page for the better part of a minute, then finally start scribbling.
Dear Malcolm,
I hope you are well and the topic of our last conversation has been dealt with. Please add this to my last message instructions:
The sidewalk incident was just the start. CB is lost. Our New York friends are looking for you.
The language seems off, but I don’t know how much scrutiny it might receive if it’s intercepted. “Hunting for you” would be more accurate but probably a giveaway.
I pause, wondering how to get any personal message across, then add the last line.
I’m looking forward to seeing you again.—B
I add the date and time I need the message sent to for Milo, then stare at the words, hating them for how inadequate they are compared to how I really feel. Thinking of the possibility of the committee members reading them helps me resist adding more. I’ll just have to tell her how I feel in person.
The hotel hallways traverse two more lush gardens on my way to the main dining hall. I follow the sound of instrumental music to the first floor and through an elaborate lobby. An usher in a swallowtail coat and tight vest bows stiffly before opening the door for me.
Dining room is too modest a description for the space I enter. Banquet hall might be more fitting, but even that sounds humble compared to the opulence in view. Waiters bearing silver trays weave in and out of marble columns that flank the parallel banquet tables and direct attention toward the far end of the room. A massive tapestry is hung behind the head table and its occupants, a heavyset Indian man and his equally rotund wife. The man is standing and has the attention of the room but pauses his speech as I enter. I bow and follow the usher toward a vacant seat between Viznir and Mayra Summers. Genesis smiles as I pass, and once I’m seated, the man at the front continues.
“The mettle of a chronothon racer has always been superior. These racers who have lost their lives did so in the act of achieving greatness. Their legacy will endure in the annals of chronothon history. The chronothon committee takes great pride in honoring our racers, regardless of their ranking at the outcome. Their families will likewise be honored at the closing ceremony.” The man spreads his arms and smiles at us. “We are committed to providing you with the ultimate in racing adventure and to ensuring the course meets safety standards. These tragic losses will not daunt our enthusiasm for providing you with the best experience of your lives.”
The man grins and looks around the room to a smattering of applause, but I notice most of it is coming from the hotel staff. The academy teams and the Admiral give brief claps, but the applause dies quickly. Our host seems satisfied, however, and eases himself back into an elegant oversized armchair.
I turn to Viznir. “What did I miss?”
“You missed the soup and the lentils, and most of the speech.”
“Who is that guy? What did he say?”
“He’s an undersecretary to the viceroy. Vikash Manavi. He said the committee is investigating the deaths but doesn’t suspect foul play.”
“Ivan got stabbed through the chest. How can that not be foul play?”
Viznir puts his hand up to hush me. “Not so loud.”
“Why?” I whisper. “What’s the—” I stop speaking as a pair of British soldiers walk behind us. Viznir concentrates on his soup. Once the soldiers are past I lean closer. “What’s going on?” Viznir just shakes his head and ignores me. A woman with a serving tray passes and sets a plate of pita and various dipping sauces between Mayra and me. I nod at her and help myself.
The feel of this rendezvous dinner is far less jovial than Rome. Tad and Blaine are still laughing with one another at a position closest to the host, but the rest of the room is subdued. The few racers that are involved in conversations are doing so in hushed tones. I turn to Mayra on my left. “How did you make out in the last level?”
Mayra leans back and lets Genesis field the question.
“We did pretty well, considering the obstacles. We had to get aboard the train twice and find a car carrying our objective. It turns out the passenger car we needed didn’t get loaded till a few stops after we found the train, so that slowed us down. We spent a bunch of time searching the wrong compartments.”
“Were you with Jet and Cliff during it? How’d they do?”
“They did great. They had an objective on a ranch out in the middle of nowhere, but they found it right away. Where did you end up?”
“The circus.”
“Aw, man. I heard there was a circus. That would have been more fun. Was it cool?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Its employees weren’t the nicest, but it definitely wasn’t dull.” I flex my sore knuckles and go back to my bits of pita. Servers are beginning to pass out more steaming dishes from trays, and I’m anticipating their arrival at my end of the table when I
catch Milo’s eye from across the room. He and Kara are seated between Jonah and a team of men I haven’t met yet. Milo inclines his head toward the door then gets up from the table. He slips out amid the chaos of the dozen busy servers, and no one seems to pay attention. I excuse myself and skirt around the columns to the door. Outside in the hall, Milo gestures for me to follow him up a servants’ stairway cleverly hidden in the wall paneling. As I climb the narrow steps behind him, I can’t help but voice my curiosity. “How’d you know about this?”
He waits till we reach the roof of the hotel to respond. “You’re going to find there are lots of tech advantages to being from the future. Architectural analysis apps are the tip of the iceberg.” He pulls his glasses off and cleans the lenses with his sleeve. Like me, he’s been outfitted in a light-colored suit. The linen contrasts with his coffee colored skin and in the darkness of the rooftop gives the illusion that his clothes are glowing. “I don’t know if you realize what these other teams are going to be capable of, but once we hit an era with the Grid in place, there’s going to be a major shift in strategy. Teams have been conserving power and having to operate off Grid, but once we’re past the dawn of the internet and the gadgets start coming out, it’ll be game on.” He puts his glasses back on. “Assuming we make it that far.” Milo steps to the edge of the building. “Do you know where we are?”
I stare at the darkness beyond the hotel’s walls. A few lamps flicker through the swaying trees, blinking at me in the warm breeze.
“We’re in India, right?”
“Yes. Ajmer-Merwara province. You know when?”
“Not exactly.”
“It’s the beginning of 1900. Out there, out past those trees, six million people are starving to death from drought and famine.”
“Why are we here?”
“I think we’re being sent a message. I think someone thinks it’s funny to have us attend a banquet in the middle of a country that’s starving. Like it makes us complicit with this somehow.”
“That’s awful. Who thinks like that?”
Milo frowns at the horizon and then turns to me. “You have your message?”
I fish the folded paper out of my pocket and hand it to him. He scans the words quickly. “This is it?”
“All I could come up with on short notice.”
He passes the paper back to me. I stare at it, confused. “Don’t you need to copy it or something?”
“I already did.” He taps the frames of his glasses. “I’ll encrypt the info, send it through the etherweb via the timegate link disguised as some kind of backup maintenance code, and once it hits an eligible courier system, it will route to your receiver as you wrote it.”
I nod as if I understand. “Who else is going to see it?”
“Nobody. The courier system only decrypts it in the presence of the recipient. You haven’t used the courier system before?”
“Nope.”
“Well you will.” Milo turns back to the horizon. In the distance, a woman is wailing. Her voice wavers in the breeze, a cry of total despair. Milo’s glare hardens. “The British mismanaged the food supplies here and exported so much that when the draught struck and the livestock started dying, the people weren’t far behind. The child mortality rate was . . . horrible. The fact that time travelers are participating in this makes me sick.”
I stare at the darkness in the direction of the wailing. “What can we do?”
“Nothing. What happened here already happened, but we can figure out who would want to capitalize on it. Someone put us here for a reason.”
“What did you find out in the mine?”
“We found the device. Definitely future tech, somewhere in the twenty-second century if I had to guess. It was subtle. We also found more info about your suspect. Ajax, as you called him, had an exit programmed in the time gate. Whoever gave him the job to blow up the mine also gave him an escape route.”
“Then the committee is rigging this for sure. They’re the ones who programmed the gates. They have to be in on it.” This revelation makes my own predicament seem even more hopeless. I was aware Geo had a fix in somehow, and that was bad enough, but having the entire chronothon rigged is another layer of danger I wasn’t prepared for.
“It may not be the whole committee,” Milo says. “I doubt the whole organization has been corrupted, but certain members have to be in on it. At least one of the gate design engineers or programmers and whoever is recruiting saboteurs.”
“Who gains from this? Kara said the chronothon will lose tons of money and credibility as a result. Why would the committee sabotage its own source of income?”
Milo checks the watch on his wrist, then slips his sleeve back over it. “People are already talking about forfeiting because of the danger. Titus and Leonard were next to me at dinner. They were deciding whether or not to continue. Another team, Carlos Palo and his guide, quit as soon as they arrived tonight. Whatever the saboteur is up to, my guess is it will happen soon. Otherwise there won’t be a race left to tamper with.”
“Ivan was murdered. There was no question. The same murderer was part of me getting signed up for this race.”
“Was it the man dressed in black you mentioned? The one with the scar?”
“No. Another guy. He has these creepy gray eyes and sort of a mean look to him, like he enjoys hurting people.”
“Was he wearing black, too?”
“No.”
“What about the four-legged man? Ajax.”
“No. He wore overalls. Is the black clothing significant?”
“It might be. I’ll need to see if I can research the data we’ve got and check if either of these guys show up. I’ll see what I can come up with. Any pieces of this puzzle are useful right now.”
When Milo and I slip back into the dining hall, I find my place setting has been loaded with two more courses of food. The knowledge of the outside world and the memory of the woman wailing through the trees has robbed me of my appetite, but I do my best to not let the food I’ve already been given go to waste. I turn down the dessert course and attempt to get up and make my way back to my room as soon as it’s socially acceptable. Cliff grabs my arm as I pass him and stops me. He’s holding a glass of something dark in his other hand and thrusts it at me.
“Travers. You’re in on this, too.” He puts the glass in my hand and pours another for himself. He gets unsteadily to his feet and gestures for Jettison to rise, too. Jet catches my eye and shrugs apologetically as he stands. Cliff’s words are slurred, but he has an air of gravity to his speech. “To Charlie Barnes. A good racer and a great man. He deserved better.” He clinks his glass against mine and Jettison’s and downs his shot in one gulp. I throw mine back as well, grimacing as the alcohol burns its way down my throat. Cliff tilts the bottle into his glass again, sloshing a bit of the dark liquor onto the tablecloth in the process. He next aims the bottle for my glass.
I shield the top with my free hand. “I think I’m good.”
Cliff glares at me and knocks my hand aside with the bottle. “For Tulley and his boy.”
I sigh and let him fill my glass. Cliff fills Jettison’s and then raises his glass again. “Tulleys.”
I down my drink and begin to count the others we’ve lost. This is going to be a rough night.
19
“We are all someone’s past, but we are also someone’s future. Try to give them both something to be inspired by.”–Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 1903
The banging won’t stop. I stumble through the darkness and jerk the door open to find Viznir reading a note that’s been tied to the elephant trunk on my door.
“Oh good. You already got the message.” Viznir steps past me into the room while I squint at the note, trying to make out the writing in the light from the hallway gas lamp.
“Which message?” I pull the slip of paper from the door and blink a few times to get my eyes to focus. My head aches and my mouth is dry.
“That one. About wea
ring your suit again this morning. They must have something special in store for us this level.”
I look down at my wrinkled clothing that I never took off after dinner. “Oh. Totally on top of that.”
Viznir is lighting a lamp on the desk. He looks tired. He surveys the room, taking in my scattered clothing and the dented bed covers where I collapsed.
“What time is it? It’s still so dark.” I pick up my canteen and swish some water around my mouth.
Viznir frowns at me. “It’s 3:30. Perks of coming in fourteenth. Any hope of sleep is for people who at least make the top ten. Get your stuff, we’ve got to go.”
The departure time gate is in a courtyard filled with the sound of running water. Five separate fountains feed a common shallow pool at the center before being channeled off to some other part of the hotel. Vikash Manavi is standing in an illuminated archway at the far side of the courtyard, dressed in a jacket with no lapels that is buttoned up to his thick neck. He’s having a discussion with Ariella and Dagmar when we arrive. The women are no longer dressed in the fashion of Indian women; this morning they are both wearing skirts that taper at the knees, and jackets. Both ladies are also wearing hats. Viznir and I round the pool and join them. As Vikash welcomes us, Ariella turns her face toward us also. She has angled the rake of her hat to her left side in an attempt to conceal the bruise on her face that has emerged in violet hues. While she doesn’t seem any happier to be up at this hour than we are, her expression toward me has lost some of its usual mockery. Dagmar inclines her head toward me and I wave.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Vikash says, also giving the slightest of bows.
I bow back. “Good morning.”
“The ladies will precede you through the gate. I’ve just finished telling them that you will leave your belongings here for this round. They will be forwarded ahead for collection at the next gate. Please place all your accoutrements in this repository.” He gestures toward a crate that’s been set near a decorative archway.
In Times Like These Boxed Set Page 79