Seamus and Hazel were from the same home universe, and their evolution had taken a slightly different course from that of people in other worlds. Their feet were too wide in the front, with apelike big toes. Felicia was from a different universe than they were, but also a different one from Elliot’s own. She looked just as people in Elliot’s world did, though her eyes were a shade lighter than average.
Hazel and Neil were good friends and sometimes partners, although Hazel sometimes worked with Seamus and Felicia. Hazel’s monkey, Mr. Escobar, was also her first mate, though Elliot still wasn’t clear on what sort of ship she captained.
Huginn, the raven, and Pangur Ban, the mother cat, were the other team, though with Pangur Ban taking care of the kittens, the two of them stayed around the house, going out only to hunt and prowl and do whatever ravens and cats liked to do at night. Huginn had some sort of problem with his memory, and Pangur Ban helped him remember things.
Neil didn’t say which universe he was from, when he was born, or what had happened to him before he joined the Time Corps. No one else seemed to mind his reticence.
Lastly came a stout, white-bearded man named Julius, the owner of the Time Corps house here in Los Angeles. There were other safe houses, places that had been owned for decades or centuries, where Time Corps members found shelter or stayed for as long as they needed. Julius mostly stayed in his room, but he wandered the halls sometimes in his pajamas. He lost his reading glasses frequently, though he otherwise seemed mentally sharp. He said he was a researcher, and liked to read technical manuals, historical records and romance novels.
“So stable time lines are good. Time loops are bad,” said Elliot.
“That’s about the size of it,” said Neil. “Our job is to make lines out of loops, straighten things out and to stabilize the unstable time lines.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“Well, sometimes it is. Your first assignment shouldn’t be too complicated. Just make something and deliver it.”
“And I can’t go back to my trailer or see Astrid until I do this?”
“Right. You gave this time and date, and it corresponds with your future statements—”
“Which I am not allowed access to.”
Neil gave a little nod. “Which, for now, you are not allowed access to. And we know that you’ll need to return there soon, so you shouldn’t be in the area of Luna Park for a while. You need to keep a ten-mile radius. Technically, you could go back today and stay until the time Astrid returns, but you need to be here for training.”
“But I need to go to work tomorrow.”
“Not anymore,” said Hazel, smiling. “You’re with us now. You’ll get a yearly salary and paid expenses. Not that it matters that much. One little piece of gold, invested a century or two back is all it takes. A little compound interest and your money worries are over.”
“Believe me, you’ll earn every ingot,” said Neil.
Elliot looked out the window. No money worries? It was hard to imagine. Bills paid, all the groceries he wanted, a place to stay. He could buy a car. A new car, maybe even an Aston Martin or something ridiculously expensive. A convertible maybe. And maybe a house on the beach, the best surfboard money could buy, a high-end entertainment system. But none of the members of the Time Corps seemed to have much in the way of material things. Neil was fond of his black duster, and Seamus was protective of whatever laboratory equipment he had in the attic, but no one had an expensive car, and their clothes were just normal clothes. Well, normal if you considered Hazel’s pirate queen outfit and Seamus’s ugly striped trousers as normal.
“Wait, what did you say about a ten-mile radius?” Elliot asked.
“There’s something about traveling as we do that does not allow anyone to be within ten miles of themselves,” Neil said.
“Except for Neil,” said Hazel. “He’s the only one of us who can do it.”
“So the radius keeps you from meeting yourself?” said Elliot.
“Essentially,” said Neil. “But not because it would cause a paradox and end the world or anything. That doesn’t happen. It’s just, we can’t go that close to ourselves. No one knows why.”
“So how come you can meet yourself?” said Elliot. “Why can you do it and no one else?”
“Don’t know,” said Neil, but he didn’t look at Elliot as he said it.
He had so many questions, and Neil and Hazel were trying to be patient with answering them. Why were the people in each alternative universe unique? There weren’t infinite Elliots running around in other worlds, only him, living one lifetime a day at a time, even if they wouldn’t be chronological. And how could they interfere in time without causing paradoxes? And there were other difficulties.
“I have a question,” Elliot said. “If you truly travel in time, and the Earth is moving through space constantly, each time you traveled you would end up freezing and suffocating in the vacuum of space. So you’re not only traveling in time, but through space as well. How do you make sure you end up on Earth and in the right spot?”
“That’s a question for the Professor,” Hazel said.
“Okay. And another thing, you said my ability to sense time slips is useful to you.”
“It sure is,” said Hazel. “There aren’t many people who can sense when time lines are off. Some people who can do it remember little fragments of things as they would have been or they have a vague sense of unease. Not the regular feeling all people have, but something more. Most of them never have a clue why that is. But you, you can identify time slips. It can be useful.”
“A useful idiot?” said Elliot. He wasn’t a brilliant scientist like Seamus, a doctor like Felicia, a ship’s captain like Hazel or stealthy like Huginn and Pangur Ban.
“A little bit of practice, some training missions, and you’ll be ready to go,” said Neil.
“He would know,” said Hazel. “You’ve saved his life more than once.”
“And this thing I have to deliver, it will make a stable time line?”
“Precisely,” said Neil. “Right now, the existence of the thing is a loop—it has no origin. It appears in one place, vanishes, and reappears back in the first place. A normal object has to have an origin, a lifetime, and then it decays or falls apart. This one doesn’t do that, and we have to fix it.”
“And one little thing like that matters? What happens if I fail?”
Neil and Hazel looked at one another and Mr. Escobar looked down at the floor.
“What?” said Elliot.
“Well,” said Hazel. “This thing is critical to keeping this world safe. It could be overrun with slaugh. We’ve seen the potential results, and they’re bad. Very bad. This world is what is known as a hub world. If this world becomes unusable, much of our travel between worlds will be jeopardized.”
“What about Astrid and her letting slaugh through? Will this help Astrid with her problem making Doorways?”
“The Time Corps are sort of specialists in Doorways, although not the kind she makes. And yes, it will help her,” said Hazel.
“And what is this object I’m supposed to make and deliver?”
“A little bell. In the shape of an owl.”
Chapter 37
Astrid struggled and fought as she was pulled backwards through the water. She clawed and tore at the arms that wrapped her body like iron bands, but they did not loosen, even a little. The arms pulled her down, under the black water and then she was yanked so quickly that her shoes slid off and the rest of her clothing felt like it might go with it.
Then she was above the water, gasping, but still the arms did not release her. The thing waited for her to take a few breaths and then pulled her down. Again, she was pulled through the water, and again raised to the surface to breathe. Then down she went. This time, she tried t
o pay more attention. Though everything was black and she couldn’t see a thing, she felt the body behind her along with the arms. The body was strong, so strong, and it moved rhythmically in a side-to-side motion, the lower and upper parts of the body moving opposite from each other.
The next time she surfaced, she looked for the Seelie. They had gathered around the swan boat, but they were far off. She was pulled down before she could take in anything else. The person dragging her through the water was saving her, allowing her to breathe and then pulling her away from the Seelie.
After a while, it stopped pulling her under and simply towed her along the surface. They were far away from the Seelie now, far enough that there was no chance of being seen. Astrid couldn’t make out any of the fey creatures, and only knew their position by the lights on their boats. The lights on shore were farther away than ever. The creature had pulled her away from Luna Park.
And just as she started to feel glad that she wasn’t being drowned and had eluded the Seelie, she gave in to fear of this creature pulling her. She reached down to feel the arms, not to pull at them, but to explore. She also stretched down her bare feet. The thing had arms and fingers, albeit long and webbed ones. The lower legs moved as one, side-to-side, like a fish or a shark. It was a tail. And then, she understood exactly what it was that had her. For how could she be in the ocean of the fey, in a storm, dumped overboard, and then be saved by anything else?
But wait. The creature had intentionally capsized her boat. The thing had rammed her. She could have died. And now she was helpless in its arms. But it did not seem intent on harming her, or it already would have. She hoped this was true, that it was not dragging her away to kill her at its leisure.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, turning her head sideways. The thing’s face was so close, right behind her ear, but she had not heard a sound or felt a single breath in her ear. Even in the dark, she could see the flash of small, white pointed teeth when it opened its mouth to speak.
“Somewhere safe. Away from our captors.”
And then, the creature released her and she was able to stand up in the water. She waded the rest of the way out, the mermaid swimming up to shore, pulling herself out, and then changing her lower body into that of a human.
She was not pretty, at least not by the standards of modern beauty. She was not thin or young, and her face and body were those of an ordinary older black woman. But that body had been so strong and so fast in the water. And those eyes were keen enough to spot her so far off. The woman was entirely alien and strange and she was now studying Astrid.
“Thank you,” said Astrid. “For saving me.”
“I am pleased you survived.” She sounded like she was reciting words from a book, and she had an indefinable accent.
The mermaid looked out over the water, toward the Seelie. The lights were staying put. They must have thought that Astrid was under the water somewhere.
“I must go. They summon me.”
And like that, the mermaid rushed into the water. Her legs fused and grew longer, ending in a dark crescent of a tail, and she slipped beneath the water.
Astrid took in the beach and the hills behind it. If Luna Park was in the distance, then this was Santa Maria Island. And though she was free of the Seelie, she was still far from Luna Park and her only hope of returning home.
And when she did get home, what then? Wouldn’t the Seelie come again for her? Or did they need her to get to her world? Gerard and Ghislaine had spoken of meeting humans, but it was always in the distant past. But the Seelie surely were able to enter the human world, or Iolanthe would not have been able to come through. So why keep her captive? They already had a way to get to the human world without her.
Unless they wanted access to other worlds. There was Death and Unseelie, but surely there were other places as well, places stranger, and perhaps more dangerous.
Our captors. That is what the mermaid had called the Seelie. And what had happened to Yukiko? Was she also kept as a prisoner?
The water lapping at her feet looked dark, and not simply due to its normal murkiness. Even in the moonlight, she couldn’t see the skin of her feet when even a few inches of water covered them. What else hid in the depths of the dark water around here? For surely there were other mythical creatures, leviathans, sea serpents, and others that, unlike mermaids, were not kind to drowning sailors.
Her two socks had, amazingly, stayed tied to her sash and her purse was still intact. She walked up and down the beach, searching, but there was nothing but rocks and scrubby plants. Astrid waited, and eventually the mermaid returned. She changed and walked up the beach, as naked as a newborn babe, and just as unconscious of her nudity.
“I have a cave. You should come, as the Seelie will search here soon.”
The lights floated closer with each moment, and the mermaid led her down the beach. Then, she stepped back into the sea and beckoned.
“It is underwater, but you can hold your breath long enough. There is air inside.”
Astrid hesitated. The last thing she wanted was to be dragged to this creature’s lair where she could be killed or left to die and no one would be the wiser.
“The Seelie do not mean you well. Like the fox, they can keep you forever.”
“You know about Yukiko?”
“They are her captors. They are my captors as well. And I despise them.”
She understood, but she was frightened of being dragged down, of being lost, of not knowing where she was going or how she would get out. She made herself step into the surf. Then, the mermaid seized her and yanked her down beneath the water.
She tried to keep her eyes open, but it was no use in the black. She was pulled along, down deep where the pressure hurt her ears, and then into a tunnel. Then they moved upward and the mermaid’s strong arms pushed her to the surface. She filled her lungs with air, held onto a rocky bit of wall and then wiped the water from her eyes.
The grotto was beautiful. Bioluminescent algae clung to the walls, giving the place a bluish green cast. The light reflected on the water and wavered on the walls, making the whole place look like it was under water. A submerged ledge jutted out beneath a foot of water, and the mermaid gave her a gentle push toward it. She used it as a step and climbed out onto the rough, rocky floor of what looked like a cave. A dark hole opened at the back, large enough to crawl through, leading back into the interior of the rocky island.
“Stay here. I have to go speak to the Seelie,” said the mermaid, and she was gone.
The room was about ten feet across and just tall enough for Astrid to stand. The jagged rocks made a sort of dome overhead, marred by a long crack where white moonlight poured in. A little gust of cool air blew from the tunnel. There must be a hole that provided fresh air in that direction also.
She took a few paces toward the tunnel. The rock under her feet was rough and craggy, like volcanic rock, only more solid and less porous. It cut into the soles of her feet. The bioluminescent algae lined the tunnel, and she lowered herself down, trying to see into the dark, but the tunnel made a sharp twist a few feet in and she could not see beyond it. She crawled into the tunnel, past the twist and then climbed as it sloped upward. It hurt her knees and palms and she had to move slowly.
It was then that she heard the crying from up ahead inside the tunnel. It was Yukiko. She went on, and the tunnel opened enough for her to stand in a kind of craggy hallway. Water collected in little pools between the rocks, and the algae colonies were larger here, giving more light. Mats of tightly woven sea grass cushioned her feet. It was almost homey.
A few things hung on the walls, just as in a human hallway. One was a life preserver with a ship’s name printed on the side. Another was the skull of a sea creature, narrow and long-toothed, its empty eye sockets extraordinarily large, as if it lived deep under the wate
r. It was mounted like a trophy.
Covering two doorways were curtains of seaweed, dried and woven with bits of rock and shell. The crying sound came from behind one. She parted the seaweed curtain and entered.
A treasure cave, she thought. Though most of the items were far from treasures. There were no crowns or cups or chests full of gold doubloons. On the floor and tucked into crannies in the walls were objects of all sorts. There were plastic toys, like the sort that came in fast food meals for children. And there were shoes, both sneakers and flip-flops. A deflated volleyball sat on the floor beside a gigantic pearl-white nautilus shell, perfect and unbroken. There was a bowl filled with smooth sea rocks, all of them white, and a water-warped photograph of a child. It was black and white, and the little boy posed in front of a suburban house beside his tricycle.
The sobbing came from one side, and she found a cloth, a hunk of burlap from an old coffee bean sack, tossed over something. She peeled it back and put her hand to her mouth.
The voice, it was Yukiko’s, and this was her spirit ball. It could be nothing else. It was a perfect glass sphere, or something like glass, clear and smooth and the size of a softball. Inside were white light, and lightning, and something like the glitter inside a snow globe mixed with sorrow and weeping and beauty. It was power, both strong and subtle, and illusion, and the very soul of a person. A non-human, most certainly, but a person.
She didn’t want to touch it, but she wanted to comfort it. The thing was in pain. This thing, it was immortal, she knew, or close to it. Something in her felt kinship with it. The ball was, she understood, a soul. A soul without a body. She had never encountered such a thing, as it was unnatural, grossly unnatural. And yet, here the thing sat, beside a silver fork with a monogrammed S on the handle and a piece of driftwood in the shape of the moon. Somewhere far away from her spirit ball, Yukiko cried, alone and frightened.
The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series) Page 79