The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series)

by Heather Blackwood

  “I’m not inventing stories, if that’s what you mean. Would you like me to prove it to you?”

  “You would play for me?” he said it as if she was granting him some kind of sacred gift. He looked hesitant, expectant, and also like he was preparing for disappointment.

  “Certainly, if you like. I have to return home and fetch my violin though.”

  “I’ll be here all day. I was planning on leaving tomorrow.”

  She set her plate near the sink and the cat cracked its eyes open enough to look at her, then resumed its nap.

  “How do I know you’ll be here when I get back?” she said. Her voice came out softer and more childlike than she had intended. Mr. Grey could leave, and his promise to see her on her birthday would be fulfilled. He had never promised to take her into the future.

  “I’ll be here. Promise.”

  She looked at him, assessing if he was telling the truth, but she simply didn’t know him well enough to be sure.

  “You don’t believe me,” he said. “And really, you shouldn’t. How can you really trust anyone? You’re smarter not to.”

  “That’s terribly cynical. And you promised to see me on my birthday, and you have.”

  “If it’s in my future, it was simply me stating what had already happened. I didn’t intentionally fulfill a promise. And yes, it’s cynical. I don’t make apologies for that.”

  “I think you’re more optimistic when you’re older.”

  “So I’ve heard. Now, are you going to go get your violin? Or do I need to take a stroll downtown and see what’s happening in the jazz clubs?”

  “What is jazz?”

  “Another anachronism, that’s what. It’s music, a type of music. And New Orleans is, will be, famous for it.”

  “A new type of music?”

  “Yeah, and I’ll tell you all about it when you come back with your violin.”

  “Do you promise, do you swear on your mother’s grave, to be here when I get back?” she said.

  “Jeez, you are distrustful, aren’t you?”

  “The last person I trusted ran off last night into another time.”

  “Who was that?”

  “The Professor.”

  “What’s his name?” He looked wary.

  “Seamus Connor.”

  He relaxed. “Fine. There are a few time travelers I’d rather not cross paths with, that’s all. I don’t know him.”

  “Well, you will. But wait here, and I’ll return with my violin.”

  She left him sitting in the kitchen, wondering if he would be there when she returned. She was a fool to trust him, so she decided to pretend that he wouldn’t be there when she got back. The whole thing would cost her nothing but a cab fare. She retrieved her violin and returned to Miss Wilde’s house.

  After she knocked on the door, she turned toward the street, ready to leave. The door opened and Mr. Grey invited her inside.

  “You said it was your birthday, right?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Then Happy Birthday.”

  He handed her a little glass bottle with a tiny dragon-headed ship inside.

  Chapter 21

  March 21, 1864

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  Hub world

  “Did it work?” asked Miss Sanchez. “I can’t tell if it worked.” She craned her neck to look onshore. A moment later she groaned and put her hand to her head, presumably from dizziness.

  Seamus felt ill as well, and he studied the area along the riverbank, but everything looked just as it had in his own time. Horse-drawn carriages rattled along the riverfront and women with bell-shaped skirts strolled with men in bowlers and top hats.

  “We need readings,” said McCullen. “I’ll take us to shore.”

  While McCullen rowed them ashore, Seamus put away the time machine and retrieved the portable sensor used for readings. His nausea wasn’t as bad this time around. When they touched the shore and he leapt out to pull the boat to shore, he saw that McCullen and Miss Sanchez did not feel well at all. He took readings.

  “It’s most definitely another world,” he said, confirming the readings while McCullen helped Miss Sanchez out of the boat and removed their belongings. “And it appears to be March. I’m thinking about the second or third week.”

  They rolled the time machine and their trunks onto the sidewalk where they bumped along the wooden planks. Stopping by a newsstand, Seamus was pleased to learn that it was March twenty-first, that there was a Civil War in this world and that the president was named Joshua Lincoln.

  “Lincoln lived in this world. Not Jacob Lincoln from my world, but a Lincoln,” said Miss Sanchez.

  “Interesting,” said the Professor. In his world, Ezekiel Lincoln had been assassinated when he was still a senator. Breckinridge was now president. The man beside him, McCullen, had been responsible, at least partly. His krewe had arranged the killing for political reasons. Seamus didn’t think McCullen was aware that he possessed this information.

  “McCullen,” Seamus said, “who was president during the Civil War in your world?”

  “Obadiah Lincoln. I would be interested in seeing a photograph of this Joshua Lincoln to see if they are the same man.”

  “Their feet are like mine,” said Miss Sanchez softly.

  “Never mind that,” said Seamus. “Look what they’ve done to the cathedral.”

  Saint Louis Cathedral stood at the back of Jackson Square, and though it was still bright white with three steeples rising into the air, it was also changed. Instead of a cross at the tip of the steeple, there was the figure of a leaping horse.

  “What have they done to it? They’ve desecrated it,” said Seamus.

  “No, Seamus,” said McCullen. “It’s more like my world. The Christ religion existed, but it didn’t spread so widely in Europe in my world. I was visiting a temple of Epona, the horse goddess, in Ireland when I came through to your world. This may also be one of her temples.”

  “Let’s find the train station,” said Miss Sanchez. “We need to get going.”

  “The earthquake synchronicity isn’t until September,” Seamus said. “We intentionally gave ourselves plenty of time to get to Los Angeles.”

  “The city will be damaged,” said McCullen. “The earthquake will rival the one later in San Francisco, though Los Angeles is more sparsely populated, if I remember correctly. Terrible destruction.”

  “Cheery,” muttered Miss Sanchez. Without waiting for the men, she set off down the street and Seamus had to hurry to keep up, burdened by the bags and the wheeled trunk as he was. McCullen wheeled the other trunk, and Miss Sanchez carried two bulky bags. She paused now and again as nausea or dizziness overcame her, and he and McCullen did the same. Seamus hoped Hazel was right, that this sickness would get easier with time. Otherwise, frequent travel would be a miserable experience.

  “We need to get money,” said McCullen. “Give me some of the gold.”

  Seamus hesitated, but then dug out a ring and gave it to McCullen who then set off to ask where he could trade gold for money.

  “Take this.” Seamus gave Miss Sanchez a gold necklace. “You might want to hide it so you don’t tempt any thieves.”

  “Thanks.” She turned away from the street and discreetly triple looped it around her ankle and fastened it.

  “Six more months until I’m home,” she sighed with a little smile of longing.

  That brought Seamus a twinge of pain, like a tiny cut. Naturally, she wanted to return home to her own time. And he would do everything within his power to get her there. But once there, then what? Would she want to part ways, or would she, perhaps, wish to see what else was out in the vast set of universes? There was no sense in asking her now, as her heart was set on one goa
l and one goal only. But once that goal was attained, perhaps she would consider his offer.

  McCullen returned and split the money three ways. “The exchange rate isn’t bad. The people on the street back there must think I’m mad, but I asked the prices of a few things, and they’re comparable to what things cost in our world. No need for the two of us to hire ourselves out as ditchdiggers to earn our wage.”

  McCullen smiled at the jest, but Seamus didn’t find humor in it. He and McCullen had worked together doing grimy, miserable work at Mountjoy Prison, and later they worked on the machinery together. He didn’t care to rethink the memory. He pulled out a gold watch and gave it to McCullen.

  “If we get separated, you’ll need the money,” he said and turned away before McCullen could thank him. They found the train station and Seamus inquired at the window about a train through Houston. It was the most direct route to go west.

  “I’m sorry,” said the man behind the counter. “There’s still a Union blockade. No trains in or out.”

  Texas was a Confederate state and if it was supplying the southern troops, then a Union blockade made sense. It made their plans more difficult, however.

  “But if you are interested,” said the man, “you can go north through Arkansas and then west, through Indian Territory. Next train isn’t until day after tomorrow. Leaves at quarter after eleven in the morning.”

  “That will do. Three tickets, then,” said Seamus, and paid him. McCullen walked off to talk with some of the other people at the train station.

  “What are we going to do for two days?” sighed Miss Sanchez. She looked off down the train tracks.

  “We can get rooms in a hotel. And McCullen and I can start time mapping this world. A small delay is not necessarily a bad thing. I can take readings in the same locations in town here as I did at home.”

  “That will be useful, I suppose. And I should probably learn more about how the machine works and how to operate it. Just in case something happens.”

  “That’s an excellent plan.”

  He thought of Hazel, and how he had taught her to close the time rips. He had left the equipment there for her, and he hoped she would continue the work. He had also taught her as much as she was willing to learn about how the time machine worked. She understood it as well as she could. She didn’t have his head for numbers, but few people did. Even McCullen occasionally had difficulty keeping up. It was as if the numbers were alive and moved themselves into position on their own inside his mind. He knew his own brain was doing the work, but it sometimes felt as if an invisible hand were rearranging things, allowing him to see patterns that others missed. It was useful, exceedingly useful. It allowed him to win hand after hand of cards on the riverboats and to create useful inventions.

  By inheriting, now Hazel would reap the benefits of his ability. He had spent years now trying to correct his mistake in creating the time rip through which Miss Sanchez had come. And once he atoned for his deed and got her back home, he might still return to his home. But no. He understood his own nature well enough to know that if he could explore something new, solve an equation, turn a dial and step into a new place, he would take that chance.

  Miss Sanchez was not like this. She wanted to get home, and that was that. Though she was concerned by what was history to her, events mattered less to her than people did. He remembered how much interest she had taken in Hazel when she was a child, and how she had insisted on helping at the hospital after an explosion had injured a number of people. She had been training to be a doctor when she came into his world and she wanted to cure disease, help the sick and heal people. Like McCullen and himself, she was tireless and relentless, in her own way.

  McCullen returned. “I asked someone, and there’s a hotel up this street that will do.” They headed up the street, and McCullen paused to buy a copy of the Picayune, the Louisiana Courier and a copy of Harper’s Weekly. When they got to the hotel, they paid for two rooms, one for Miss Sanchez and the other for Seamus and McCullen.

  While Miss Sanchez settled into her room, Seamus watched as McCullen went through both of the newspapers, page by page.

  “There!” he pointed.

  “Who is that?”

  “Joshua Lincoln, the president in this world. He’s not the same man as my Obadiah Lincoln.”

  “I wish I had seen a daguerreotype of Ezekiel Lincoln in my world. But he was just a senator from Illinois.”

  “You knew of him?” asked McCullen.

  “I only heard of him.” Seamus had the strong feeling that he should drop the subject. He wondered if McCullen had seen an image of Senator Ezekiel Lincoln before he and his krewe had arranged his murder. But if he had, then McCullen would have already known that Seamus’s world’s Lincoln and the Lincoln from McCullen’s world were two different men.

  That meant that McCullen had arranged the killing of Senator Lincoln, sight unseen. It was inhuman. He had not only failed to look the man in the eye, but had not even seen a picture of his face.

  McCullen had other blood on his hands. He had also arranged the murder of President Elect Buchanan, which had led to Breckinridge becoming president. If a Lincoln, by whatever first name, was president in McCullen’s world, Miss Sanchez’s world and this one, did that mean that it was somehow foreordained? Were the events of time, perhaps, more set than he had thought?

  “Do you know what this means?” said McCullen. “I had wondered, when I first came through the time rip into your world, if each person was truly unique.”

  “We won’t be meeting our doubles then?”

  “No. And that’s a relief,” said McCullen. “Two of you would be too many.”

  “You’re too kind.”

  “Although two Miss Sanchezes might not be such a bad thing.”

  “You leave her alone.”

  “Yes, yes. I see how you look at her. Poor lad. You want to please her by taking her home, and all she wants is to leave and be rid of you. You’ve given years of your life and even left your little Hazel behind, all for a woman who barely gives you a second glance.”

  “It’s my fault she got pulled from her world, and it’s my duty to get her back.” Seamus started unpacking his things.

  “Your duty, you say? Then I ask you this. When do you get to stop doing your duty and start doing what you want? And secondly, what, exactly, is it that you want?”

  Chapter 22

  January 8, 1864

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  Hazel and Seamus’s World

  Neil didn’t look at Hazel while she played, not at her face anyway. He watched her hands, the swift presses of her fingers against the strings on the neck of the violin, the slight sway of her upper body as she played, but he didn’t look directly at her face. It would have been invasive, like watching her bathe. Too personal. Too intimate.

  The white cat jumped onto the living room chair across from him. The creature had never approached either of them for petting, but seemed to want to be in the same room with them.

  Neil closed his eyes. Hazel was playing a Baroque piece, at his request. It was Vivaldi’s “La Tempesta di Mare,” an energetic piece which had not been created as a piece for a single violin, but the way she played it made him think it was improved by the reduction. The piece went on, then slowed, and he felt the movement of the sea, and more, of the air and the earth beneath the sea.

  This girl, this very strange girl, played in a way that felt like her fingers were twining up inside his stomach, around his lungs and heart. The sound coming from the instrument was alive, and he saw how the ignorant could say it sang with a demon’s voice. But he knew that it was a sublime thing, not of good or evil, heaven or hell. It was simply and utterly itself. And in that wholeness, that integrity, it was a living spirit.

  The final notes brought the piece to a cl
ose, but he did not open his eyes. For one, they were moist, and he would not let Hazel see that he was such a strange person to be so moved by some music. And for another, he didn’t want to look upon her face and see the features, the freckled nose, the brown eyes that hid behind them the being who could bring the magic from the instrument. That was like looking at the velvet box instead of the diamond inside it.

  “Thank you,” he said after a pause, wondering by her silence if she thought he might have fallen asleep.

  “What else would you like to hear? Perhaps Bach or Mozart?” Her voice was soft and he liked the gentle sound of her Southern accent.

  No, not Mozart, he thought. Nothing so mad and beautiful or he might break somehow. There was a fragile thing inside him, and listening to her play poked at it, like moving a log on a dying fire. It might erupt in flame. But he did not want her to stop.

  “Surprise me,” he said.

  And she did, gently. She played a piece he did not know, a slow, simple piece, almost like something a child would play when he or she was first learning. Only it was far too sad and full of darkness to be from the world of childhood. Or maybe it wasn’t. He did not remember his own childhood except in bits and pieces. Perhaps it had been painful, and his own mind kept him from remembering it.

  Then Hazel played a piece by Bach, and his mind quieted, and then she played Mozart, saving the best for last. When she was done, he stayed motionless and heard her put away the violin and bow and snap the case shut. She did not disturb him, for which he was more grateful than he could say.

  The white cat still sat on the chair, napping. He wished he could stay there, perhaps fall asleep. He so rarely slept. But the world required his return.

  Hazel Dubois was this girl’s name. He thought of the man on the train he had killed, Andrew Dubois, but it was a common name among the descendents of French immigrants. There were thousands of people named Dubois in the United States. There was no need to consider it anything but a coincidence.